'Understanding your Landscapes Resilience - Beyond Regulation' involves farmers working directly with scientists to develop valuable insights that will benefit rural communities across New Zealand. It aims to provide scientific landscape data that will help land users understand, in detail, their landscape’s natural capital which will help them make decisions on what they can do to achieve their greenhouse gas (GHG) and water quality environmental objectives in a financially viable way. 

 

This joint initiative has secured funding of $498k from the government, and has the additional support of local regional authorities, industry bodies and rural professionals.  

 

'Understanding your Landscape Resilience | Beyond Regulation' will use physiographic, satellite and airborne data to develop a model of the farming landscape that highlights variations in soil greenhouse gas emissions and water quality at catchment, farm and paddock scales. Findings will inform the creation of an online portal for users to access this data, as well as a training course for rural professionals and a support network for land users. Three pilot studies are currently taking place across sub-catchments of the Matāura to examine the application of this novel approach and to understand if the project can be extended regionally and nationally.