Our Changing World

In this week's retrospective, Alison Ballance revisits an ocean acidification special feature called The Acid Test.

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Alison Ballance's foray into the vaults finds a feature on ocean acidification, The Acid Test and adds a 2021 update.

Alison Ballance revisits a story about ocean acidification, which has been described as 'global warming's evil twin.'

She also catches up with NIWA marine biogeochemist Cliff Law to discover what we've learned in the past decade about the growing impact of carbon dioxide on the acidity of the world's seas.

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The Acid Test - a feature on ocean acidification, first played 2010.

Our Changing World has made a number of stories about climate change and its impact on the world's oceans:

Acid test for coastal seas

Winners or losers? Antarctic starfish and climate change

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2020 Prime Minister's Science Prize winners talk about their research and teaching.

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There are some familiar names as well as some new faces among the winners of the 2020 Prime Minister's Science Prizes.

There are some familiar faces as well as some new names among the Prime Minister's Science Prize winners this year.

Two of the five prizes are awarded for efforts to better understand and communicate the Covid-19 pandemic.

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The five Prime Minister's Science Prizes are New Zealand's most valuable research awards. Awarded annually, they are worth nearly $1 million.

A real team effort

The team prize, worth half a million, has been awarded to a consortium of 24 researchers working together in the field of complexity science as part of Te Pūnaha Matatini, a Centre of Research Excellence.

In early 2020, director Shaun Hendy saw that there was a gap in providing the New Zealand Government with the data science it needed to make informed decisions about responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.

He assembled a multi-disciplinary team that developed a series of new mathematical models and ran a multitude of different scenarios to inform the unique situation that New Zealand found itself in.

The team has done modelling work and analysis on a wide number of areas, including hospital capability, contagion rates and likely disease spread, virus genomic tracing, contact tracing, and vaccination.

The results of this work were translated for use by the government policymakers and front-line operators and helped inform the government's response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Among other actions, this led to the government's 'Go Hard and Go Early' mantra that resulted in stringent lockdowns - both the country-wide lockdown beginning in March 2020 and the tailored Auckland lockdown beginning in August 2020.

Hendy and University of Auckland colleague Siouxsie Wiles have both been active spokespeople on the subject of Covid-19.

Hendy says the team's work is not finished yet. He adds "we will be leaving our tools, making them open so they can be maintained in perpetuity, so next time we meet an infectious disease crisis they are there for people to use."

Technology a winner in Prime Minister's Science Teacher Prize

Sarah Washbrooke, from Remarkables Primary School in Queenstown, is the first technology winner of the Prime Minister's Science Teacher Prize.

She uses a hands-on approach to teaching technology which is so engaging that her students often remain unaware of the depth and range of learning they are doing…

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Alison Ballance digs into the Our Changing World archives for an Antarctic blast from the past with Voice of the Iceberg 2: Revelation.

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Alison Ballance digs into Our Changing World's Antarctic treasure chest and finds part 2 of Voice of the Iceberg.

Alison Ballance made two trips to Antarctica during her 12 years as host of Our Changing World. She also visited 'virtually' with an award-winning podcast series that celebrated the sounds of icebergs.

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In this week's icy retrospective, Alison revisits the Voice of the Iceberg series, in which artist Joseph Michael and his team recorded the characters and sounds of icebergs in Antarctica.

In Part 2: Revelation, the varied personalities of different icebergs began to reveal themselves.

Visit the Voice of the Iceberg webpage to see Joseph Michael's stunning photos.

Voice of the Iceberg won Best Creative Feature at the 2018 NZ Radio Awards.

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Alsion Ballance revisits a story looking at the complexity of the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake.

After more than 12 years as host of Our Changing World, Alison Ballance is diving into the archives in search of some golden oldies.

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This week's theme is 'the big one'.

The magnitude 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake in 2016 had a big impact on the landscape and communities of North Canterbury and Marlborough.

It also shook up the science community, which responded quickly to study and understand what was described as a 'very complex earthquake.'

Check out the original story from May 2017, to see photos and read more about the earthquake.

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In this week's retrospective, Alison Ballance looks at the 'big ones': a big earthquake in Kaikōura in 2016 and a big science effort to understand it.

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With more than a thousand conservation stories under her waterproof parka, science journalist Alison Ballance is retiring from RNZ's Our Changing World programme.

Alison Ballance has dived with 17 different species of shark, she's drilled down into the ice of Antarctica to capture the symphony of Weddell seals, she's become the kakapo "aunty".

But after telling more than 1,000 stories, the voice of RNZ's science, environment and nature programme Our Changing World, Ballance is retiring.

"My work life balance gets a bit blurred because I can go to a remote island and help out on a diving expedition and I can be recording for Our Changing World and I might be blogging for Auckland Museum, when I went to the Kermadecs and I'm diving and it's all just a big blancmange for me," she says.

Today on The Detail Ballance talks to Sharon Brettkelly about her career that was inspired by a four-month trip to the sub Antarctic islands to study feral sheep for her master of science. She didn't really want to study the sheep but she desperately wanted to go to the southern tip of New Zealand.

"I've kept going back, sometimes there's decades between my trips but once you get down there it just gets into your system."

For five years she persistently contacted the Natural History New Zealand documentary team in Dunedin asking for a job, before they finally recruited her. The job took her to Mongolia, Ecuador and Russia but the "incredible" Galapagos Islands remain her top overseas experience, continuing her "obsession with seabirds and with islands and with natural history".

For more than 12 years Ballance has taken OCW listeners to far flung places to tell science and nature stories.

"I'm a tramper from way back, I'm a camper from way back so I don't mind how basic the living conditions are, if it's an opportunity to join people - and there are some very generous and amazing scientists in New Zealand who've been willing to have me along - I don't mind how crude my living situation is if I've got an opportunity to tag along and tell stories."

The rugged and famously windblown sub-Antarctic islands have a special place in Ballance's heart but they are also the location for one of her toughest living and working experiences.

"The living conditions were very difficult because there had been a massive rainfall event, there'd been these huge slips which had shunted the one small hut on the island about 20 or 30 metres and it needed to be fixed…

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Alison Ballance looks back at the 1,000+ stories she has made, and revisits stone-eating spotted shags and urban eagle rays

As Alison Ballance prepares to stand down as host of Our Changing World, she looks back at the more than 1,000 stories she has made and revisits some favourites.

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This week's theme is wildlife spectacles 'under our noses.'

Stone-eating spotted shags turn up at dawn on Tata Beach, in Golden Bay - and Alison headed there in 2013.

In 2015, she went in search of urban eagle rays in Wellington's inner harbour.

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