Soil quality monitoring in the Waikato region 2011

Report: TR 2013/49

Author: M Taylor

About this report

There's a saying “What is on the land ends up in the water”, and soil quality has direct impacts on water quality.

Monitoring of soil properties provides important information on the overall health of the soil and any potential impacts that land use may be having on soil quality in the region.

Waikato Regional Council participated in the Sustainable Management Fund project “Implementing Soil Quality Indicators for Land” from 1998–2001. The council continues to sample new sites and resample previously sampled sites, at a rate of about 30 sites each year, to determine the extent and direction of changes in soil quality. There are now 151 soil quality sampling sites in the Waikato region. Sites were chosen to cover a representative range of land uses (including native sites to provide background levels) and soil types.

This report provides baseline data and allows identification of the impacts of land use and associated key soil quality issues that have emerged over the last 8 years.

Accumulation of contaminants, which has been part of the soil quality report in the past, is now considered under a separate report currently being written (Trace element monitoring in the Waikato Region 2011).

Read or download the survey report

Soil quality monitoring in the Waikato region 2011 [PDF, 1.1 MB]