 We're at New Frontiers 2016. I'm Elina Siegfried and I'm here with Justine Dore from Land Care Research, General Manager. Justine, tell us a little bit about what you do at Land Care Research. Well I'm one of the science general managers and we're New Zealand's National Environmental Research Institute for the country and we work on a whole range of environmental issues, everything from soils through to insect pests, through to mammalian pests through to forest ecosystems and pretty much everything in between, everything on the land. Right and what are the biggest problems that I guess you're finding in New Zealand around these areas? Well I think there's a range of pressures caused by humans, human involvement in the land, the pressures that humans have on our ecosystems and our landscapes but particularly climate change is also a big driver of change in our landscapes and it puts pressures on our native species, it puts pressures in terms of risks, things like flooding, natural events, etc. All has an impact and we do a lot of work around information, making environmental research information available to everyone so we do a lot of work around mapping New Zealand's forestry, understanding wetlands, new ways to control pests whether they're insect pests or whether they're possums, they all have an impact on our ecosystems and we also do a lot of information around soils, around plants, etc. Right so how is that information applied to I guess inform land use or what we do here with the land? Yeah we often do a lot of that type of work, helping people understand what the pressures are on the New Zealand ecosystem and environments and also taking response during the right thing, during the best thing and sometimes the best thing is what's good appropriate environmentally and sometimes it's also what's also possible economically so we believe we can have optimal choices, the best possible choices around the land for people but also for the environment. So some of the ways that we help is that we provide councils with really high quality information around soils we run the National Soil Mapping Programme for the country, we're still working on that but everyone wants to know about their soils and how they perform, what that means on farm particularly as we're very concerned in New Zealand about our waterways, fresh water quality can help people swim in them, can you take food from the rivers and there are some regulatory limits that we try and help inform. Right so we do hear quite a lot in New Zealand around fresh water quality issues are there similar issues that are facing our soils that we don't hear so much about? Yeah it's a really good question, people often focus on the waterways because that's where they recreate, that's where they relax and things, places that are really culturally important. Land is so much more of it, it's all got soil underneath it and the soils are pretty critical but for some reason in New Zealand we map and we understand and we research a lot about our forestry systems around our waterways, around our wetlands and that's important but we still don't know enough about our soils, we still are trying to understand our soils we're a lot further behind and I think it's really important to understand what are the characteristics of our soils, how do they behave when it's very rainy or when there's a lot of intensive agriculture on our soils and in fact, thank you research, we do a lot of work around understanding that and helping farmers, helping councils, helping the national departments the government departments make better decisions about land use on soils. Right so how are you providing that information I guess to the public or to farmers? Well all of it's online, when we have information we're a publicly funded entity largely and whenever it's publicly funded we have a huge commitment to what we call open data data online, information online, so we run a number of online information portals they have very exciting maps that are nicely coloured and they have a great amount of information and data that sit behind them so we make that all available, one of our big products is or our portals is called S-Map online, soils map online and when you go on there you can get a huge information resource, we have a lot of land resource inventory information that anyone can just log on and find and use because we believe in open data and the benefits of New Zealanders being able to access that and in particular thank you research is actually the custodian of seven of New Zealand's 25 nationally significant collections and databases those are national science assets for the country and we maintain and improve them for all New Zealanders so all of that information when it's a national collection or database is definitely made available online for people to use and make better decisions about land. That sounds like quite a wealth of information that you're holding on to are there any other exciting big projects or things that you're particularly passionate about working on coming up in the future? Yes well I think we trialled something last year in November in New Zealand we ran a very first hackathon based off environmental research information it was called Nature Hack, it was run in collaboration with Callahan Innovation and we used that information that huge data sets about our land, about our forests, about our insects, about our native biota, our biology, our species and we let loose 45 hackers from all across the ICT and creative communities and with some amazing results came out of that so we're quite keen to try to do more of this type of innovation, how do we get better value and relevance from this incredible investment by the Crown in science and research around the natural environment. So this year in 2016 we're coming up with a few initiatives to really get better value and engage New Zealanders with this work, with this research and the information. That sounds like some fantastic opportunities for cross-sector collaboration there. That's right, we often do work with a range of other organisations whether it's other research providers or our users Māori landowners in particular have a huge information needed the minute about their land, how to unlock the potential of that land and at the heart of every land use decision or land management decision is good information. So that's really one of the critical roles that land care research plays in the New Zealand science system but we need to do it collaboratively. That's one thing that I think the New Frontier has really shown us is that working together you can get there faster and better than working on your own. Fantastic, thanks so much Shafiq.