| Research activity 2015/16 Key Achievements |
Core Funding Investment ($M excl GST) |
| |
2015/16 (planned) |
2015/16 (actual) |
| Characterising Land Resources |
$3.34 |
$3.55 |
| End-users: MPI; DOC; MfE; LINZ; PFR; NIWA; regional councils; Statistics New Zealand; DairyNZ; educators; landowners; New Zealand public; data managers; researchers; AgResearch; Māori; Antarctica New Zealand; Antarctic Treaty Countries; primary industries and sector groups (notably the fertiliser industry); Ravensdown; Fonterra; Api NZ; EMaR; OVERSEER®. |
| Soil Mapping and Modelling – Outcomes 2 |
$0.90 |
$0.64 |
- Completed mapping of Hawke's Bay, Waikato and inland Canterbury soils using digital soil mapping techniques. Development of a set of soil mapping standards that enable a more consistent approach to soil mapping, particularly at farm-scale, was begun in collaboration with regional councils and industry groups. As soil characteristics are the predominant determinant of leaching of nutrients and other contaminants into waterways, advancing coverage of S-map and ensuring standards for mapping is critical in the development of the next generation of Regional Plans and limit-setting under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater.
- Experienced significant increase in the use of soil information through S-map Online, as evidenced in usage statistics of 1 544 112 map views, 60 432 queries and 40 660 soil fact sheet downloads. Access to soil data via OVERSEER® also increased through the development of an interoperable web service that automatically extracts S-map data for soil properties that control nutrient leaching. Version 6.2.2 of OVERSEER® thus reduces the manual input of 18 soil data fields by OVERSEER® users, and removes the risk of manual error or manipulation by users. This is the first time OVERSEER® has connected externally to provide auto-population of data and provides important assurance to support OVERSEER® being used as regulatory tool.
|
| Data Stewardship Infoservices – Outcome 2 |
$1.63 |
$1.68 |
- Launched a new version of the Soils Portal with updated content and functionality for desktop, tablet and mobile platforms. The enhanced site provides access to national mapping datasets such as the NZLRI, FSL, nationally significant databases such as the National Soils Database (NSD), regional soil mapping in S-Map, soil quality indicators and the legacy soil surveys that predate these datasets.
- Further upgraded the National Soils Database Repository (NSDR), including automating the upload of field data from a field collection app. These features contribute to the development of the NSDR into a next-generation system that is capable of efficient upload, storage and interrogation of large quantities of highly variable soil attribute data. The NSDR is crucial for the maintenance of soil observation data, is essential to powering S-map, and has potential to enable environmental reporting initiatives, e.g. Environmental and Monitoring Reporting (EMaR).
|
| Ecosystem Services State and Trend – Outcomes 2 |
$0.81 |
$0.46 |
- Used research on the characterisation, scaling and modelling of a range of ecosystem services (ES) to support industry and government in:
- identifying options for improving ES that benefit farmers and communities (e.g. flood, sediment and nutrient mitigation) in the sensitive Hikurangi Catchment, co-funded through a partnership between Fonterra and the Department of Conservation
- spatial modelling of floral resources to optimise honey production
- developing ES-based indicators for incorporation within future iterations of Environment Aotearoa, in collaboration with Ministry for the Environment.
- Application of the ES-based LUMASS tool to determine the impact of agricultural intensification and irrigation potential in Ruamāhanga and the Wairarapa Water Use Project was highlighted in a presentation to Ministers.
|
| Uncertainty and Error – Outcomes 2 |
N/A |
$0.37 |
- Developed a statistical error model for the soil water retention curve. This error model, together with a soil profile simulation tool, examination of the impact of soil variability within a farm on OVERSEER estimates of nutrient losses, and an assessment of fitness for use of a simple water balance model contribute collectively to the quantification of uncertainty attributes of the soil information used in policy development.
|
| Land Cover and Land Use – Outcomes 2 |
N/A |
$0.40 |
- Developed new data processing procedures for Sentinel-2, a new European satellite constellation. Advancements included fully automating the querying of the Sentinel data hub, image assembly and cloud assessment, as well as calibration and correction for atmospheric and terrain effects. Since December >1000 scenes of NZ have been collected (each 100 x 100 km) and will be used to support the generation of future versions of the Land Cover Database (LCDB) and projects reliant on remotely-sensed data to analyse land cover, use and change.
- Improved NZ's ability to produce detailed analysis of paddock-level land use by porting a collection of paddock statistics onto a high-performance computing facility. This development is critical in supporting the increasing volume of images for land-use analysis. Real world farming systems are complex, often with more than one crop per paddock in a single growing season or different practices for the same crop. Analysis of a new region (Hawke's Bay) has allowed us to develop improved approaches to deriving land-use rule sets to support regional planning, policy, and consenting.
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