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    A development and application of GIS in Whanganui Catchment based river environment classification system : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Resource and Environmental Planning, Massey University
    (Massey University, 2002) Zhai, Qian
    This thesis concerns a development and implementation of Geographical Information System (GIS) for the New Zealand Whanganui catchment, based on a new methodology for river environment classification systems in New Zealand. The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) are developing this system with assistance from regional councils. The river habitat classification is sometimes called river "ecotyping". It describes the process of dividing rivers into similar or different physical classes based on the habitat requirements of the plants and animals that live there (Murray McLea, 1999). This project focuses on generating a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) for the Whanganui river catchment to determine Whanganui catchment boundaries and a series of hydrology parameters such as catchment patterns and channel slopes, etc. It comprises layers of elevation, rainfall, geology, land-cover and additional ecotyping related attributes for classification of each arc of the Whanganui River. There are five sections in this thesis. The first section introduces the basic concept of hydrology in environmental and ecological aspects. It reviews the hydrology model with GIS and DTM. It also briefly describes the river environment classification system – ecotyping methodology. Finally, it describes the aims and achievements of this project. The second section focuses on the ARC/INFO software environment, using different ways to generate the DTMs and present criteria that will be used to test and analyse the accuracy of DTMs. Also the Whanganui catchment and catchment boundaries will be determined. The third section focuses on the river analysis. The main target is to test whether the 1: 50000 topographic data can be used to determine the channel slope and channel sinuosity for river sections other than reaches (Snelder et al. 1999). The fourth section describes the method of using ecotyping parameters and classification rules to classify each arc of the river into a database. These rules are introduced in the article "Further development and application of a GIS based river environment classification system" (Snelder et al. 1999). The last section as a conclusion of the thesis will summary the achievements, the methodology of the processing and the results of the application of this research.
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    Benthic communities of the Whanganui River catchment : the effects of land use and geology : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Ecology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1999) Horrox, Jonathan Vaughan
    The response of macroinvertebrate communities and freshwater mussels to variation associated with land use and geology was investigated in small headwaters of the Whanganui River catchment in the North Island of New Zealand. Conductivity and water clarity were higher in streams with soft tertiary/quaternary sedimentary geology, independent of land use. These soft geology catchments, when forested, had distinctive community structure often involving high relative abundances of Ephemeroptera. Pastoral agriculture resulted in a lower diversity and abundance of pollution sensitive taxa. Impacts of pastoral land use were accentuated by soft sedimentary geology culminating in low diversity and abundance in pasture streams with soft geology. Multivariate analysis showed that community structure varied significantly depending on the combination of land use and geology type present, with land use as the most significant factor. However, variations in geology may mask the effects of land use between catchments. In the main Whanganui River, taxonomic diversity and numbers of pollution sensitive taxa decreased downstream. This was correlated with reduced periphyton biomass and increased suspensoids. Estimates of macroinvertebrate community structure differed between artificial substrate and kick samples collected from the same sites. Shell morphology of the freshwater mussel Hyridella menziesi was not correlated with water chemistry. One site near the northern boundary of the Whanganui River catchment contained mussels with distinct shell morphology. A possible explanation involving stream capture by tectonic movements is considered. Shell erosion was correlated with channel width suggesting shell erosion is greater in larger waterways. Lack of demarcation in shell growth annuli meant accurate estimates of mussel age were not possible. Poor demarcation is likely to result from non seasonal patterns of environmental variation.
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    The Gilfillan killings : narrative, marginality and the strangeness of the colonial past : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2003) Loveridge, Greg
    This thesis is about the process of telling stories. In particular, a group of stories centred on a disturbing moment in New Zealand history. The killing of the Gilfillan family was a brutal and unprecedented event, shocking the European population of New Zealand in 1847, and maintaining an ability to discomfort even 150 years later. The following pages are not an attempt to write the 'true' story of the Gilfillan killings, but rather to consider what made the killings shocking and disturbing in the first instance, and, how that power to shock and disturb can give a greater access to a historical moment. The focus is on how fragments of the past can maintain an aesthetic power in the present, and how an event becomes a cultural object, entangled in context and culture, and constantly renegotiated and re-narrated over time.The killing of the Gilfillans is normally called the "Gilfillan massacre", or the "Gilfillan murders". Both these phrases prejudge their deaths as criminal and 'savage' acts - whereas for the Maori involved they were at least partially political. Whatever the judgement of the morality of the killing of the children, I find the phrase "Gilfillan killings", more neutral, without eliding the violence of the event. One recent writer David Young (Young, David, Woven by Water: Histories from the Whanganui River, Wellington: Huia, 1998) has used the phrase the "Gilfillan muru" (killing). While I have avoided the use of the word "massacre", as it feels so redolent with colonial overtones, I feel no need to place the killings in a solely Maori cultural sphere - although in itself, by bringing a conception of the plurality of cultural responses to the killings, Young's act of renaming has strong points. A key assertion is that the story of the Gilfillan killings is marginal; outside the bounds of 'normal' experience. The marginal story, uncomfortable, disorientating, or difficult to understand and contexualise, is a way to puncture and break through explanatory meta-narratives which overwrite the particularity and contingency of history. To use a phrase borrowed from the school of literary criticism called Russian Formalism, it can 'make things strange', offering a new way of seeing and understanding the world. Boris Eichenbuam, "The Theory of Formal Method" in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Vincent B. Leitch, gen. ed., New York, London: Norton Press: 2001, pp. 1062-87. To the Russian formalists the "roughened form" of great literature "defamiliarised" or "made things strange", breaking through "automatism" - normalised habits of perception. Analysing the marginal, strange-making story as a 'way in' to a historical past is a technique that has been used by a number of historians, particularly in the last few decades, as postmodernism and the influence of other disciplines, such as anthropology, began to move historical practice away from broader explanatory meta-narratives towards more historically specific and culturally situated explanations. A famous example is the description of the execution at the beginning of Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish.4 4 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, translated from the French by Alan Sheridan, New York: Pantheon Books, cl977. pp. 1-3. The image of the pincers tearing flesh from the condemned body of Damiens the Regicide is an access point into a different "mentalite", a different set of cultural conceptions of justice, whose obvious distance from more modern understandings leads to the renewed investigation of the underlying precepts of each.
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    The possum problem in the Manawatu-Wanganui region : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Agricultural Science in Resource Economics at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1992) Lock, Glenda Margaret
    Since their introduction to the Manawatu-Wanganui region possums have increased dramatically in number and are now causing problems in both rural and urban areas. They are responsible for the destruction of indigenous forests and the spread of bovine tuberculosis, a disease that threatens the access of dairy, meat and several other animal products into a number of key overseas markets. The study addresses this by looking at the problems associated with possums and the value that the region places on their control. This was done via two contingent valuation surveys, one in the form of a dichotomous choice question and the other in the form of an open ended question. It was found that 97.8 percent of respondents were aware that possums were causing problems in New Zealand. The region placed a value of between $1.5 million and $7.0 million per year on possum control. Farmers' valuation of possum control was approximately twice that of nonfarmers, possibly reflecting the adverse effect that possums could have on farmers' income stream.