Improving the economic and environmental performance of a New Zealand hill country farm catchment: 2. Forecasting and planning land‐use change

Abstract

The second phase of a multi‐stakeholder, integrated catchment management project at the Whatawhata Research Centre is described. This project explored land use and management change options to improve the economic and environmental performance of the case study hill land catchment farm. Research observations, decision support models and expert stakeholder knowledge were used to develop and predict the outcome of various scenarios for the key performance indicators identified by the Catchment Management Group (CMG). These scenarios included Pinus radiata plantation forestry, livestock intensification and enterprise change, riparian revegetation, indigenous forest restoration and pastoral land stabilisation with erosion control plantings. The resulting predictions did offer scope for improving both the economic and environmental performance of the case study catchment farm, if the time scale for change was not a constraint. The CMG developed a new land‐use plan in order to meet the diverse economic and environmental goals they had originally identified for a “well managed hill land catchment”. The feasibility of this plan depended on significant capital investment in land use and enterprise change, and the outcomes were likely to take up to 30 years to manifest themselves in the key performance indicators.