The Christchurch earthquakes brought to an abrupt halt a process of adaptive reuse and gentrification that was underway in the south eastern corner of the central business district. The retail uses that were a key to the success of this area pre-earthquake could be characterised as small, owner operated, quirky, bohemian, chaotic and relatively low rent. This research reports on the progress of a long term, comprehensive case study that follows the progress of these retailers both before and after the earthquakes. Findings include the immediate post-earthquake intentions to resume business in the same location as soon as possible were thwarted by government imposed cordons of the CBD that were only lifted nearly three years later. But, businesses were resilient and generally reinvented themselves quickly in alternative suburban locations where government “rebuild” restrictions were absent. It remains to be seen if this type of retail will ever return to the CBD as government imposed plans and the rents demanded for retail space in new buildings appear to preclude small owner-operated businesses.
Question: Does canopy tree regeneration response to different large disturbances vary with soil drainage? Location: Old-growth conifer (Dacrydium and Dacrycarpus), angiosperm (Nothofagus and Weinmannia) rain forest, Mount Harata, South Island, New Zealand. Methods: Trees were aged (1056 cores) to reconstruct stand history in 20 (0.12 - 0.2 ha) plots with different underlying drainage. Spatial analyses of an additional 805 tree ages collected from two (0.3 - 0.7 ha) plots were conducted to detect patchiness for five canopy tree species. Microsite preferences for trees and saplings were determined. Results: There were clear differences in species regeneration patterns on soils with different drainage. Conifer recruitment occurred infrequently in even-aged patches (> 1000 m²) and only on poorly drained soils. Periodic Nothofagus fusca and N. menziesii recruitment occurred more frequently in different sized canopy openings on all soils. Weinmannia recruitment was more continuous on all soils reflecting their greater relative shade-tolerance. Distinct periods of recruitment that occurred in the last 400 years matched known large disturbances in the region. These events affected species differently as soil drainage varied. Following earthquakes, both conifers and N. menziesii regenerated on poorly drained soils, while Nothofagus species and Weinmannia regenerated on well-drained soils. However, Dacrydium failed to regenerate after patchy storm damage in the wetter forest interior; instead faster-growing N. fusca captured elevated microsites caused by uprooting. Conclusions: Underlying drainage influenced species composition, while variation in the impacts of large disturbance regulated relative species abundances on different soils.
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) as a tool offers opportunities for modeling the inherent complexity and uncertainty associated with socio-environmental systems. This study draws on New Zealand ski
fields (multiple locations) as socio- environmental systems while considering their perceived resilience to low
probability but potential high consequences catastrophic natural events (specifically earthquakes). We gathered
data at several ski fields using a mixed methodology including: geomorphic assessment, qualitative interviews,
and an adaptation of Ozesmi and Ozesmi’s (2003) multi-step fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) approach. The data
gathered from FCM are qualitatively condensed, and aggregated to three different participant social groups. The
social groups include ski fields users, ski industry workers, and ski field managers. Both quantitative and
qualitative indices are used to analyze social cognitive maps to identify critical nodes for ANN simulations. The
simulations experiment with auto-associative neural networks for developing adaptive preparation, response and
recovery strategies. Moreover, simulations attempt to identify key priorities for preparation, response, and
recovery for improving resilience to earthquakes in these complex and dynamic environments. The novel mixed
methodology is presented as a means of linking physical and social sciences in high complexity, high uncertainty
socio-environmental systems. Simulation results indicate that participants perceived that increases in Social
Preparation Action, Social Preparation Resources, Social Response Action and Social Response Resources have
a positive benefit in improving the resilience to earthquakes of ski fields’ stakeholders.
The major earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 brought to an abrupt end a process of adaptive reuse, revitalisation and gentrification that was underway in the early 20th century laneways and buildings located in the south eastern corner of the Christchurch Central Business District. Up until then, this location was seen as an exemplar of how mixed use could contribute to making the central city an attractive and viable alternative to the suburban living experience predominant in New Zealand.
This thesis is the result of a comprehensive case study of this “Lichfield Lanes” area, which involved in depth interviews with business owners, observation of public meetings and examination of documents and the revitalisation research literature. Findings were that many of the factors seen to make this location successful pre-earthquakes mirror the results of similar research in other cities. These factors include: the importance of building upon historic architecture and the eclectic spaces this creates; a wide variety of uses generating street life; affordable rental levels; plus the dangers of uniformity of use brought about by focussing on business types that pay the most rent. Also critical is co-operation between businesses to create and effectively market and manage an identifiable precinct that has a coherent style and ambience that differentiates the location from competing suburban malls. In relation to the latter, a significant finding of this project was that the hospitality and retail businesses key to the success of Lichfield Lanes were not typical and could be described as quirky, bohemian, chaotic, relatively low rent, owner operated and appealing to the economically important “Creative Class” identified by Richard Florida (2002) and others. In turn, success for many of these businesses can be characterised as including psychological and social returns rather than simply conventional economic benefits. This has important implications for inner city revitalisation, as it contrasts with the traditional focus of local authorities and property developers on physical aspects and tenant profitability as measures of success. This leads on to an important conclusion from this research, which is that an almost completely inverted strategy from that applied to suburban mall development, may be most appropriate for successful inner city revitalisation. It also highlights a disconnection between the focus and processes of regulatory authorities and the outcomes and processes most acceptable to the people likely to frequent the central city. Developers are often caught in the middle of this conflicted situation. Another finding was early commitment by businesses to rebuild the case study area in the same style, but over time this waned as delay, demolition, insurance problems, political and planning uncertainty plus other issues made participation by the original owners and tenants impossible or uneconomic. In conclusion, the focus of inner city revitalisation is too often on buildings rather than the people that use them and what they now desire from the central city.
"Prior to the devastating 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes, the city of Christchurch was already exhibiting signs of a housing affordability crisis. The causes and symptoms were similar to those being experienced in Auckland, but the substantial damage to the housing stock caused by the earthquakes added new dimensions and impetus to the problem. Large swathes of the most affordable housing stock in the east of the city were effectively destroyed by the earthquakes. In itself this would have pushed the mean house price upwards, but compounding problems exacerbated the situation. These include the price effects of reduced supply of both rented and owned housing and increased demand from both displaced residents and an influx of rebuild workers. The need for additional temporary housing while repairs were undertaken and the associated insurance pay-outs bidding up rents with improved rental returns leading to increased interest in property investment. Land supply constraints and consenting issues inhibiting the build of new housing and political infighting and uncertainty regarding the future of parts of the city leading to a flight of development activity to peripheral locations and adjoining local authorities. Concerns that the erosion of the city council rating base combined with inadequacy of insurance cover for infrastructure will lead to large rates increases, increased development costs and reduced amenities and services in future years. These and other issuers will be elaborated on in this paper with a view to exploring the way forward for affordable housing Christchurch City."
Globally, the maximum elevations at which treelines are observed to occur coincide with a 6.4 °C soil isotherm. However, when observed at finer scales, treelines display a considerable degree of spatial complexity in their patterns across the landscape and are often found occurring at lower elevations than expected relative to the global-scale pattern. There is still a
lack of understanding of how the abiotic environment imposes constraints on treeline patterns, the scales at which different effects are acting, and how these effects vary over large spatial extents. In this thesis, I examined abrupt Nothofagus treelines across seven degrees of
latitude in New Zealand in order to investigate two broad questions: (1) What is the nature and extent of spatial variability in Nothofagus treelines across the country? (2) How is this variation associated with abiotic variation at different spatial scales? A range of GIS, statistical, and atmospheric modelling methods were applied to address these two questions.
First, I characterised Nothofagus treeline patterns at a 15x15km scale across New Zealand using a set of seven, GIS-derived, quantitative metrics that describe different aspects of treeline position, shape, spatial configuration, and relationships with adjacent vegetation.
Multivariate clustering of these metrics revealed distinct treeline types that showed strong spatial aggregation across the country. This suggests a strong spatial structuring of the abiotic environment which, in turn, drives treeline patterns. About half of the multivariate treeline
metric variation was explained by patterns of climate, substrate, topographic and disturbance variability; on the whole, climatic and disturbance factors were most influential.
Second, I developed a conceptual model that describes how treeline elevation may
vary at different scales according to three categories of effects: thermal modifying effects, physiological stressors, and disturbance effects. I tested the relevance of this model for Nothofagus treelines by investigating treeline elevation variation at five nested scales (regional to local) using a hierarchical design based on nested river catchments. Hierarchical linear modelling revealed that the majority of the variation in treeline elevation resided at the broadest, regional scale, which was best explained by the thermal modifying effects of solar radiation, mountain mass, and differences in the potential for cold air ponding. Nonetheless, at finer scales, physiological and disturbance effects were important and acted to modify the regional trend at these scales. These results suggest that variation in abrupt treeline elevations
are due to both broad-scale temperature-based growth limitation processes and finer-scale stress- and disturbance-related effects on seedling establishment.
Third, I explored the applicability of a meso-scale atmospheric model, The Air
Pollution Model (TAPM), for generating 200 m resolution, hourly topoclimatic data for
temperature, incoming and outgoing radiation, relative humidity, and wind speeds. Initial assessments of TAPM outputs against data from two climate station locations over seven years showed that the model could generate predictions with a consistent level of accuracy for both sites, and which agreed with other evaluations in the literature. TAPM was then used to generate data at 28, 7x7 km Nothofagus treeline zones across New Zealand for January
(summer) and July (winter) 2002. Using mixed-effects linear models, I determined that both
site-level factors (mean growing season temperature, mountain mass, precipitation,
earthquake intensity) and local-level landform (slope and convexity) and topoclimatic factors (solar radiation, photoinhibition index, frost index, desiccation index) were influential in
explaining variation in treeline elevation within and among these sites. Treelines were
generally closer to their site-level maxima in regions with higher mean growing season
temperatures, larger mountains, and lower levels of precipitation. Within sites, higher
treelines were associated with higher solar radiation, and lower photoinhibition and
desiccation index values, in January, and lower desiccation index values in July. Higher treelines were also significantly associated with steeper, more convex landforms.
Overall, this thesis shows that investigating treelines across extensive areas at multiple study scales enables the development of a more comprehensive understanding of treeline variability and underlying environmental constraints. These results can be used to formulate new hypotheses regarding the mechanisms driving treeline formation and to guide the optimal choice of field sites at which to test these hypotheses.
