CLUES for Kaipara Harbour Drainage Area. Landuse comparison 1770-2002. Prepared for AgResearch. 

Semadeni-Davis, A. 

2012 

 

Individual: Leane Makey, Coordinator IKHMG 

Report 

The Catchment Land Use and Environment Sustainability (CLUES) model was applied to the Kaipara Harbour catchment to determine the impact of landuse change on water quality indicators (total nitrogen, total phosphorus, total suspended solids, E.coli) and to provide input data for harbour contaminant modeling. CLUES is a modelling tool which couples a number of existing models (including Overseer) within a GIS platform. It can be used in GIS which queries a geo-spatial database. The catchment drainage area has about 13,000 river reaches or sub-catchments. CLUES was run for two land use scenarios: pre-European (c.1770) and 2002 (using landcover database). The 1770 scenario finds a catchment dominanted by native forest and scrub (manuka, kanuka & fern). The 2002 scenario has a catchment dominated by sheep and beef farming followed by dairy farming, exotic forests and remnants of native forest. Generated yields for nutrients and sediment and catchment loads and cumulative yields for nutrients, E.coli and sediments are given to provide an indication of which catchments are contributing the greatest contaminant loads to the harbour. 

Biodiversity, Integrated Management and Coordinated Action, Socio-economic 

Catchment, landuse scenarios, sustainability, dairy, sheep, beef, nutrients, e.coli, ecosystems, suspended soils