Keywords
land use, water quality, decision support
Start Date
1-7-2008 12:00 AM
Abstract
Land-use in New Zealand poses risks to water quality in streams and lakes, yet there have previously been few tools used in New Zealand to predict the effects of land-use change at catchment to national scale. The CLUES spatial decision support system has been developed recently to assist with the assessment of land-use change on water quality, farm economics, and employment. The system incorporates a number of existing models from several research providers, ranging from models of leaching at the farm scale to national regression-based models. An early application of the model is the identification of catchments where the receiving surface waterbodies are at risk from nitrate sources. Several extensions of the system are underway to improve the usefulness for local decision-making. These include making the spatial resolution of land-use finer, adding mitigation and land management options, and increasing the number of environmental measures provided by the model, and linking these measures to a values framework. This will improve the utility of the model for integrated catchment management.
CLUES Spatial DSS: From Farm-Scale Leaching Models to Regional Decision Support
Land-use in New Zealand poses risks to water quality in streams and lakes, yet there have previously been few tools used in New Zealand to predict the effects of land-use change at catchment to national scale. The CLUES spatial decision support system has been developed recently to assist with the assessment of land-use change on water quality, farm economics, and employment. The system incorporates a number of existing models from several research providers, ranging from models of leaching at the farm scale to national regression-based models. An early application of the model is the identification of catchments where the receiving surface waterbodies are at risk from nitrate sources. Several extensions of the system are underway to improve the usefulness for local decision-making. These include making the spatial resolution of land-use finer, adding mitigation and land management options, and increasing the number of environmental measures provided by the model, and linking these measures to a values framework. This will improve the utility of the model for integrated catchment management.
