29 Facts About Susie Wood

Susanna Wood is a New Zealand scientist whose research focuses on understanding, protecting and restoring New Zealand's freshwater environments.

Susie Wood is active in advocating for the incorporation of DNA-based tools such as metabarcoding, genomics and metagenomics for characterising and understanding aquatic ecosystems and investigating the climate and anthropogenic drivers of water quality change in New Zealand lakes.

Susie Wood has consulted for government departments and regional authorities and co-leads a nationwide programme Lakes380 that aims to obtain an overview of the health of New Zealand's lakes using paleoenvironmental reconstructions.

Susie Wood has a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington, with a thesis on microcystins in New Zealand freshwater organisms.

From 2006 to 2009, Susie Wood worked as a Foundation for Research, Science and Technology Post-Doctoral Researcher.

Susie Wood has held honorary positions as a lecturer as Waikato University, and as honorary research associate, biological sciences, Victoria University.

Susie Wood was senior research fellow, biological sciences, at Waikato University from 2011 to 2017, and since 2018 has been a senior adjunct fellow, Waterways Centre for Freshwater Management, University of Canterbury.

Susie Wood participated in research that provided evidence, for the first time, that homoanatoxin-a and anatoxin-a, two toxic cyanobacteria, were likely to have caused the sudden death of the dog.

Susie Wood explained in a later news article that finding the contents in the stomach of dogs had confirmed the need for research to inform people that Cyanobacteria was often present in rivers and while it should always be treated as potentially toxic, it was most dangerous when it formed mats.

Susie Wood has been a strong advocate for the use of DNA-based tools to analyse samples and is a member of the Environmental Metagenomics team.

Susie Wood participated in a 2016 case study that evaluated two high-throughput sequencing methods of biomonitoring using DNA techniques on samples collected from 12 New Zealand rivers.

Susie Wood was involved in a 2014 investigation into the nature of microcystins in New Zealand waterways that considered the likelihood of anthropogenic eutrophication of lakes, ponds and oceans creating favourable conditions for the rapid growth of some cyanobacterial species, including microcystin.

Susie Wood contributed to the publication Impacts of Climate Change for New Zealand, a document that contained a summary of how climate change can impact the potential harm from algal blooms.

In 2014, Susie Wood noted that studies have looked at variables such as water quality, temperature, oxygen content, and pH values, yet she concluded it was not contaminated waterways due to dairying that caused blooms of cyanobacterial mats in rivers, but more likely the felling of trees close to a river which caused a runoff resulting in high amounts of sediments.

Susie Wood has suggested that leaving uncut forest buffer zones of 100 metres beside rivers could make "a huge difference" to the amount of sediment washed in by rain.

Susie Wood co-authored a paper in 2019 that reviewed research on understanding cyanobacteria within global changes resulting from climate change.

Susie Wood noted the danger of these toxins building up in food such as fish, crayfish and shellfish which if eaten, according to Wood, "could cause irreversible liver damage in humans, and even promote liver damage".

Susie Wood said that recreational water users in New Zealand were at risk because of the algal blooms on riverbanks or in water which could be accidentally swallowed.

Susie Wood contributed to a 2007 paper that identified risks associated with toxic planktonic cyanobacteria in drinking water, and highlighted the need for national guidance and policies for tackling the complex issues associated with benthic cyanobacteria which were not covered by the official government guidelines at the time,' Drinking-Water Standards for New Zealand 2005' and 'Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality Management for New Zealand 2005'.

Susie Wood co-authored a 2018 study commissioned by the NZ Ministry of the Environment to inform the development of a National Objectives Framework for the management of anatoxins in waters affected by Phormidium blooms.

Susie Wood was invited to be a member of the NZ Ministry of Health, Drinking-water Advisory Committee which conducted a review of the regulations, leading to a reviewed set of Standards with a section on cyanotoxin compliance criteria.

In 2017 Susie Wood became joint programme leader for Our Lakes Health; past, present and future, a MBIE funded five-year research project that aimed to improve water quality in New Zealand lakes by using scientific tools to collect and analyse water samples, lake bottom sediment samples and cores which are natural archives of the environmental history of aquatic communities and water quality.

Susie Wood commented that the project would provide information to understand what was driving environmental change and to inform initiatives to restore the ecological vitality of New Zealand lakes.

On RNZ, Susie Wood explained that the sediment cores would be analysed using DNA techniques to understand how and why the biological communities have changed, and gave an example of eDNA revealing the coinciding of cyanobacterial blooms in one lake with the introduction of introduced species of fish such as trout and European perch in the 1870s.

Susie Wood has acknowledged that the lakes in the project had cultural importance to the local iwi, because they were often "important sites for mahinga kai ".

Susie Wood said that working with Ngati Kuri using environmental DNA and scanning techniques to measure the current and past biodiversity of past biodiversity of lakes in the far north of New Zealand, [was] "a unique opportunity to learn from their long association with these lakes and further enrich our knowledge of these precious places".

Susie Wood has represented New Zealand as a cyclist at the Commonwealth Games and World Cup in 2006.

In 2009 she was second in the XTERRA New Zealand event, and prior to taking part in a triathlon in Nelson in 2012, this success was acknowledged, with a local news article noting Susie Wood was "strong on the road bike and can run pretty quickly on the flat".

Susie Wood was a winner of the Reg Davies Memorial Trophy in 2014.