Catchment environmental monitoring report: 2009/10

Report: TR 2010/33

Author: C Littler, N Crawford and R Hill

Abstract

As part of Project Watershed and Peninsula Project implementation, the Catchment Environmental Monitoring (CEM) Programme was developed to demonstrate the long term benefits of soil conservation. To date, monitoring has been established in selected
priority catchments for soil conservation in the Waipa, Lower Waikato, Upper Waikato and Coromandel management zones.

The Catchment Environmental Monitoring (CEM) programme allows Waikato Regional Council:

• demonstrate the long term benefits of soil conservation and river management work
  programmes
• better utilise resources and leverage opportunities to co-ordinate monitoring
  internally and externally (such as within Waikato Regional Council, NIWA and Landcare
  Research.)
• integrate new monitoring requirements into existing regional monitoring networks.

Prior to the CEM programme, soil conservation implementation relied on regional monitoring information being reinterpreted at a catchment scale. However, this information is often misleading because regional scale information is being applied at a
finer scale (catchment scale). This report provides CEM programme results for the 2009/2010 year.