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MikePole
Travelling to understand time and place

Biogeography & Vegetation

Biogeography and vegetation are concerned with the spatial pattern of life: why particular plant communities occur where they do, how those patterns change across landscapes and regions, and how climate, history, disturbance, and human activity interact to shape them. Any one vegetation is the combined expression of environment (climate, soils, etc), odd things that have happened (contingency), and time.

Posts in this category examine forests, rainforests, wetlands, and other vegetation types from a biogeographic perspective. They draw on field observations, maps, climate data, and published works from different parts of the world. These essays explore it as a dynamic system—structured by climate gradients, geological history, evolutionary legacy, and disturbance regimes.

Many of these pieces sit at the boundary between ecology and geography, asking how present-day vegetation reflects both current environmental conditions and deep historical processes. Topics include the definition and misuse of terms such as “rainforest”, the role of seasonality and extremes.

Together, these posts form a exploration of vegetation as a connected pattern of process, and history, and the modern landscape.

  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    Dunedin’s Ghost-Forests in 1901

    by Mike Pole February 10, 2025
    by Mike Pole February 10, 2025

    When a forest is dead, but somehow still there – either as bleached stumps, and felled, and possibly burnt trunks, I call …

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  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    The Lost Bush of South Dunedin

    by Mike Pole December 13, 2024
    by Mike Pole December 13, 2024

    We owe so much of what we know of early Dunedin to just a few artists! Up till 1850, there’s only a …

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  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    Deans Bush–Pūtaringamotu and the Mystery of the Missing Tree Ferns

    by Mike Pole September 22, 2024
    by Mike Pole September 22, 2024

    Tree ferns are indicators of a consistently pretty wet climate. In New Zealand-Aotearoa, if you look closely (and not too closely if …

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  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    The Immolation of Waimate Bush, Canterbury, New Zealand

    by Mike Pole July 24, 2024
    by Mike Pole July 24, 2024

    In the court case following the 1878 fire that virtually annihilated Waimate Bush, a witness described the wind conditions as “a hurricane” …

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  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    The Lost Taieri/Taiari Bush, near Dunedin, New Zealand

    by Mike Pole June 6, 2024
    by Mike Pole June 6, 2024

    Leads to New Zealand’s  ‘lost forests’ turn up in all sorts of places. I was in the Dunedin Public Library when I …

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  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    Moa ate kōwhai

    by Mike Pole January 29, 2024
    by Mike Pole January 29, 2024

    A little over 700 years ago, humans finally discovered the last habitable place on Earth, Aotearoa-New Zealand (Wilmshurst et al., 2011; Mulrooney …

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  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    Flax/Harakeke – New Zealand’s Resource Curse

    by Mike Pole November 10, 2023
    by Mike Pole November 10, 2023

    The Musket Wars? Shortly after Europeans began operating in Aotearoa-New Zealand (c. 1807-1837), a series of conflicts among the indigenous Maori dramatically …

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  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    Tuataras in Central Otago

    by Mike Pole March 20, 2022
    by Mike Pole March 20, 2022

    Bleached moa bones projected out from the steep bank of the nearly dry gully. This was exciting, as there were clearly several …

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  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    The antifragile (?) tree-ferns of Omatepe, Nicaragua

    by Mike Pole January 27, 2019
    by Mike Pole January 27, 2019

    “We’ll follow these guys – they’re three local hoodlums”, This from my local guide on Omatepe Island, Nicaragua. I was sitting behind …

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  • Biogeography & Vegetation

    The Lost Forests of Southland, New Zealand

    by Mike Pole April 8, 2017
    by Mike Pole April 8, 2017

    Forests that have disappeared so completely that you would hardly believe they really existed, have long fascinated me.  When I left my …

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MikePole
  • Home
  • About me
  • Contact me
  • Categories
    • Curio Bay – New Zealand’s Jurassic Fossil Forest
    • New Zealand Geology
    • Supernatural
  • Places
    • Australia
    • Armenia
    • Bosnia
    • Brazil
    • Canary Island
    • China
    • Indonesia
    • Turkey
    • Estonia
    • France
    • Georgia
    • Germany
    • Lebanon
    • Mexico
    • Mongolia
    • Kazakhstan
    • Russia
    • Uganda
    • New Zealand
    • India
    • South Africa