Friday 6th August
You are invited to a Lunchtime Learning on Shared Space
12-1pm, Friday 6 August, Reception Lounge, Hamilton City Council, Garden Place, Hamilton.
The speakers will cover the concepts and principles behind shared space schemes. Whether at planning, design, delivery or asset level there are emerging issues in this field. Extensively introduced in European urban centres of varied sizes the presentation includes some innovative and less well known examples from Swiss and German cities providing background for local situations. Besides city centre streets, opportunities to offer shared space based proposals can be advanced through redevelopment of the public realm including projects associated with waterfront regeneration, transit oriented development, other public transport initiatives, town or village centre improvements and some examples are included.
Speakers: Will Thresher
Director, Thresher Associates Ltd
John Potter
Principal, Boffa Miskell Ltd
Henry Crothers
Associate Director, Architectus Ltd
No need to RSVP – open invitation for you and your colleagues to attend. Please forward to anyone who may be interested!
Tuesday August 10, 2010 at 7.30 pm.
Royal Society of New Zealand, Waikato Branch Talk Series,
Facing the Future (see http://www.rsnzwaikato.org/talkseries)
The Nitrogen Cascade: past and future directions
Associate Professor Louis Schipper
University of Waikato.
Room SG.01
Gate 8
Waikato University
Nitrogen is critical to life and has greatly increased food production supporting population growth and has helped develop the New Zealand economy. However, the excess of nitrogen has recently been suggested to be one of three planetary boundaries that have been exceeded along with climate change and the loss of biodiversity. A major concern about excess nitrogen is that it can be highly mobile and once it leaves the soil, enters other ecosystems where nitrogen acts as an unwanted fertiliser. The “Nitrogen Cascade” is a term developed to describe the multiple impacts that nitrogen has moving from upland systems (often agriculture) through ground water to surface waters (including streams, rivers, lakes) and onto the ocean. This talk will describe the effects of the nitrogen cascade and the size of the issue in New Zealand currently and examine future scenarios and briefly discuss potential solutions.
Louis Schipper teaches soil science at the University of Waikato and conducts research into long-term changes in soil carbon and nitrogen. He is focused on trying to develop strategies that improve environmental performance while maintaining productive uses of land. He works closely with a range of CRIs and in the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre on soil related research. In the last two years, he was elected a fellow of the New Zealand and US Soil Science Societies.
