We mapped coastal hardening associated with 30 international urban centres and, using machine-learning algorithms, developed a model to forecast the regional expansion of 4 globally common coastal infrastructure types. We applied this model to New Zealand for anticipating regional distributions and future hotspots of socioecological risks over a 25-year period.
This review and synthesis collates the range of methods and tools that exist or are emerging for managing biofouling on submerged static artificial structures for a variety of sectors, highlighting key criteria and knowledge gaps that affect development, and uptake to improve operational and environmental outcomes.
This publication synthesizes empirical data on a wide range of vessel types and characteristics to develop a framework that allows systematic quantification of the relative risk of NIS transfer by common commercial vessel types. A potential application of the framework for assigning a relative risk level for New Zealand ports, based on the arrival frequencies of different vessel types, is presented.
Acknowledging the need for a coordinated effort to accelerate the uptake of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) based tools for biodiversity surveys and biosecurity applications, an international cross-laboratory experiment was conducted to evaluate replicability of a metabarcoding protocol and explore how laboratory-based variance in sample handling and processing impacts biodiversity assessments.
An open-access peer-reviewed publication describing a series of laboratory and field trials that examine the efficacy of continuous bubble streams in maintaining artificial substrates free of macroscopic biofouling and demonstrating that this treatment approach is effective on surface types commonly used in the marine environment.
An open-access peer-reviewed publication aimed to facilitate dialogue and innovation within this sector by reviewing current approaches for sample collection, post-sampling capture and concentration of eDNA, preservation, and extraction, all through a biosecurity monitoring lens.
In February 2020, our postdoc Ulla von Ammon embarked the Robert C. Seamans sailing ship to collect samples for comparing different sampling approaches. The first results of this study were recently presented at the DNAQUA International Conference.
An educational article on environmental DNA was published in Frontiers for Young Minds journal - a unique open-access scientific journal aimed at younger audiences with scientific articles reviewed by a board of kids and teens.
Together with a wide group of international experts a roadmap for a meaningful collaboration between researchers and end-users towards the implementation of molecular methods in marine policies was suggested and published in a peer-reviewed paper.
An important opinion paper on “The risks of using molecular biodiversity data for incidental detection of species of concern”, published in Diversity and Distributions journal.