Multi-CRI catchment GIS decision-support research (2004–2006)
Project
NIWA-led GIS model integration to assess land-use-change effects on water quality, funded from 2003/04.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Ministry for the Environment commissioned NIWA and research partners to develop a GIS decision-support framework relating changes in rural land use to catchment water quality. The programme covered national, regional and catchment analysis and included AgResearch, HortResearch, Landcare Research, Lincoln Ventures and Harris Consulting.
The reports describe planned integration of NIWA's SPARROW catchment modelling, AgResearch's OVERSEER nutrient model and HortResearch's SPASMO environmental model. The 2004 and 2006 stages provide direct evidence of the programme and work in progress. Any claim that a particular commercial interface or fully deployed system resulted requires separate evidence.
The August 2004 Stage I report also documents an already working ArcGIS interface: its Water Quality Modelling Toolbox selected catchment river reaches, ran the SPARROW nitrogen model and produced mapped outputs for the Waikato catchment. Figures 5-2 through 5-5 show the actual screen and model outputs. The other component model integrations were still under development in August 2004; the later CLUES system was demonstrated separately by 2008.