Soil: what helps create and maintain it
Soil: what helps create and maintain itAuthor: Libby May, GuideDate: September 2024Healthy soil is fundamental to our continued healthy life. It provides plants, filters and manages the volume of rainwater, hosts an enormous biodiversity both above and below ground and it can tell us about our past as well as protect our future. It’s a huge carbon pool, absorbing carbon dioxide from the air – 1,500 billion tonnes of carbon globally – almost three times more carbon than in all above ground biomass including trees, shrubs and grasses. According to the Land Care Research Soils portal, each year unsustainable land management around the globe is responsible for around 24 billion tonnes of fertile soil being contaminated, washed off the land or blown away by the wind. In New Zealand it’s 192 million tonnes a year. (1) It’s not a speedy process, creating healthy, rich, fertile soil. Its origins start with bare rock and sediment surfaces being weathered and disintegrating under the influence of climate. Over time the surface becomes available to vegetation, lead by lichens (of which we have an abundance on Tiritiri Matangi) which will root in any cracks they can find such as the greywacke we see on the Wattle Track. A thin layer of vegetation will gradually build up and in the fulness of time start decomposition which in turn produces organic acids. These help…
Spring has definitely sprung!
Spring has definitely sprung!Author: Neil Davies, GuideDate: September 2024Photos credit: Neil DaviesSunday 1st Sept. On Sunday Mary-Ann and I were over on the island checking tracking tunnel cards as part of our on-going monitoring programme. Nothing untoward and just the usual critters showing up on the cards – footprints of birds, weta, wētā punga, skinks, tuatara and Duvachel gecko to name a few. However, it was impossible not to be taken by the level of bird song, even in the middle of the day, which indeed sounded like the ‘dawn chorus’. There were lots of encounters with kōkako, hihi, korimako, tūī, pōpokotea and tīeke as well as several tuatara spotted outside their burrows. I think they were celebrating the return of sunshine and mild temperatures after the heavy rain, thunder and lightning from the weather ‘bomb’ that passed over on Saturday night. Things definitely seem to be warming up and Spring has definitely sprung! Kōwhai and karo are still blooming prodigiously all over the island and the ground is now being carpeted with yellow flower petals and the deep crimson colour of the karo flowers. It also looks like it’s going to be an exceptional year for harakeke (flax) with a huge number of flower spikes and the first flowers already opening (I haven’t seen any on the mainland yet). Rewarewa has started to flower too which also seems…