New Zealand and the Sea
New Zealand and the Sea

Author: Frances Steel

Publisher: Bridget Williams Books

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 0947518711

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As a group of islands in the far south-west Pacific Ocean, New Zealand has a history that is steeped in the sea. Its people have encountered the sea in many different ways: along the coast, in port, on ships, beneath the waves, behind a camera, and in the realm of the imagination. While New Zealanders have continually altered their marine environments, the ocean, too, has influenced their lives. A multi-disciplinary work encompassing history, marine science, archaeology and visual culture, New Zealand and the Sea explores New Zealand’s varied relationship with the sea, challenging the conventional view that history unfolds on land. Leading and emerging scholars highlight the dynamic, ocean-centred history of these islands and their inhabitants, offering fascinating new perspectives on New Zealand’s pasts. ‘The ocean has profoundly shaped culture across this narrow archipelago . . . The meeting of land and sea is central in historical accounts of Polynesian discovery and colonisation; European exploratory voyaging; sealing, whaling and the littoral communities that supported these plural occupations; and the mass migrant passage from Britain.’ – Frances Steel

Ghosts of Gondwana
Ghosts of Gondwana

Author: George Gibbs

Publisher:

Published: 2016-10

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9780947503086

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Have you ever wondered why New Zealand's plants and animals are so different from those in other countries? Why kakapo is the only parrot in the world that cannot fly, or why the kiwi lives here and nowhere else? New Zealand is an extraordinary place, unique on earth, and the remarkable story of how and why life evolved here is the subject of Ghosts of Gondwana. The challenge of explaining New Zealand's natural origins is picked up in this fully revised edition of the popular award-winning book. It presents the latest scientific research in highly readable form, highlighting studies that reveal the deep historical background of our landscapes, fauna and flora - from ancient frogs and moa to delicate insects and the magnificent southern beech forests. It introduces the latest discoveries and resolves past issues like the 'Oligocene drowning' hypothesis. Exciting fossil discoveries are revealed and new scientific technologies and approaches to the discipline of historical biogeography are discussed - approaches that range from undersea geology to molecular clocks - and it inevitably draws attention to the debates and conflicts that distinguish different schools of opinion in this holistic branch of theoretical science. This revision incorporates the results of 10 years of intensive scientific research and includes four entirely new chapters to: focus on 'yesterday's maps' to draw attention to the ephemeral islands in our history that have possibly acted as stepping stones for terrestrial animals and plants but today have sunk into the sea; incorporate the author's own special interest in an ancient group of 'jaw-moths', unknown and unnoticed by most people but with a strong message that New Zealand is part of the world when it comes to explaining where our fauna have come from; present recent research findings on our huge flightless birds, the ratites; and include New Zealand's terrestrial molluscs into the story. Ghosts of Gondwana identifies New Zealand as one of the most challenging places on earth to explain, but it's readable, engaging style and revised illustrations render this often-controversial discipline of science into a format that is accessible to any reader with an interest in natural history and the unique environment of New Zealand.

North New Zealand
North New Zealand

Author: Peter Hadden

Publisher: Wairau Press (an imprint of Random House)

Published: 2014-09-01

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1927158273

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In this book, the natural history of New Zealand's North Island, from Lake Taupo up, is described, including geology, soils, climate, flora and fauna. Chapters on different habitats are included, including forests, shrublands, wetlands and the coast.

Biogeography and Evolution in New Zealand
Biogeography and Evolution in New Zealand

Author: Michael Heads

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 652

ISBN-13: 1315351218

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Biogeography and Evolution in New Zealand provides the first in-depth treatment of the biogeography of New Zealand, a region that has been a place of long-enduring interest to ecologists, evolutionary scientists, geographers, geologists, and scientists in related disciplines. It serves as a key addition to the contemporary discussion on regionalization—how is New Zealand different from the rest of the world? With what other areas does it share its geology, history, and biota? Do new molecular phylogenies show that New Zealand may be seen as a biological ‘parallel universe’ within global evolution?

Home in the Howling Wilderness
Home in the Howling Wilderness

Author: Peter Holland

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

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A major new account of Pākehā and the land in New Zealand. During the nineteenth century European settlers transformed the environment of New Zealand’s South Island. They diverted streams and drained marshes, burned native vegetation and planted hedges and grasses, stocked farms with sheep and cattle and poured on fertiliser. In Home in the Howling Wilderness Peter Holland undertakes a deep history of that settlement to answer key questions about New Zealand’s ecological transformation. Did the settlers pursue farming regardless of the ecological consequences? Did they impose European plants, animals and farming methods on a very different environment? And did their efforts lead to the erosion, rabbit plagues and declining soil fertility of the late nineteenth century? Drawing on letter books and ledgers, diaries and journals, Peter Holland reveals how the first European settlers learned about their new environment: talking to Māori and other Pākehā, observing weather patterns and the shifting populations of rabbits, reading newspapers and going to lectures at the Mechanics’ Institute. Examining the knowledge they built up by these routes, Holland lays out how the settlers grappled with droughts and floods, worked out which plants and animals made sense, and worked out how to beat erosion and rabbits. As the New Zealand environment threw up surprise after surprise, the settlers who succeeded in farming were those who listened closely to the environment. They learned to predict weather more accurately, to farm differently with different soil types, to use different techniques of land management. In its depth and breadth of research, and with a visual component of 16 photographs and 22 figures, Home in the Howling Wilderness is a major new account of Pākehā and the land in New Zealand. --Publisher's information.

New Zealand Freshwater Fishes
New Zealand Freshwater Fishes

Author: R.M. McDowall

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-07-27

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 9048192714

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In many ways, this book is the culmination of more than four decades of my exp- ration of the taxonomy, biogeography and ecology of New Zealand’s quite small freshwater fish fauna. I began this firstly as a fisheries ecologist with the New Zealand Marine Department (then responsible for the nation’s fisheries research and mana- ment), and then with my PhD at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA in the early–mid 1960s. Since then, employed by a series of agencies that have successively been assigned a role in fisheries research in New Zealand, I have been able to explore very widely the natural history of that fauna. Studies of the fishes of other warm to cold temperate southern lands have followed, particularly southern Australia, New Caledonia, Patagonian South America, the Falkland Islands, and South Africa and, in many ways, have provided the rather broader context within which the New Zealand fauna is embedded in terms of geography, phylogeny, and evolutionary history, and knowing this context makes the patterns within New Zealand all the clearer. An additional stream in these studies, in substantial measure driven by the beh- ioural ecology of these fishes round the Southern Hemisphere, has been exploration of the role of diadromy (regular migrations between marine and freshwater biomes) in fisheries ecology and biogeography, and eventually of diadromous fishes wor- wide.