Project - Soils

State of Environment Soil Monitoring

Regional Councils have a responsibility for promoting the sustainable management of the natural and physical resources of their region, one of these being soil. Marlborough District Council undertakes a Soil Quality Monitoring programme that involves collecting samples from a network of sites that represent the main land use activities and soil types within the region and analysing them for physical, biological and chemical properties that indicate soil quality.

The Soil Quality Monitoring programme has been operating for 23 years and has begun to clearly identify a declining trend in some soil quality parameters around Marlborough.

Go to the land publications and reports page

S Map Soil Mapping

The relationship between landscapes and the soils formed upon them has been well explored in some parts of Marlborough particularly in the Marlborough Sounds valleys and the more populated Wairau and Awatere Valleys. Soil Mapping helps us to build information on soil location, soil attributes and assists in better decision making. Land use planning, water irrigation, nutrient and erosion management all require sound soil mapping. Currently Marlborough has province wide soil mapping via the Fundamental Soils Layer available via Councils Smartmaps site. In areas of more productive use FSL is being progressively replaced with soil mapping delivered by Manaaki Whenua Landcare research’s S-Map soil mapping platform.

A recent Ministry for Primary Industries program in conjunction with Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research to improve S-Map coverage, aims to map all of New Zealand’s productive low land soils. In Marlborough, this assistance will achieve 15 years work in 3 years. This project will facilitate the mapping work and update existing mapped areas to best quality data. The Marlborough Sounds valleys have recently been completed with Upper Wairau valley currently being mapped.

Several areas in Marlborough have not had soil characterisation studies performed, therefore Council has started investigating the following areas in preparation for the S-Map programme to perform detailed soil mapping:

Blind River & Flaxbourne

Areas with existing mapping (Wairau Plain and Awatere Valley) are currently under review ensure existing mapped areas have the best quality data available.

S Map Soil Mapping has allowed Council to:

Revise soil polygons based on LiDAR imagery
Have all soils classified to the NZ Soil classification
Obtain soil attribute data to each polygon
Produce soil factsheets for each soil
Provides national consistent soil names
Incorporates previously unmapped soils (e.g anthropic soils))
Sets a zoomable scale to approximately 1:50,000

Go to the S-Map on the Landcare Research website

To access a full map of soils in Marlborough
Go to the Soils smart map

The Mapping Application

What it is

The S-map mapping tool allows you to view soil maps for locations within New Zealand, and to place pins or polygons on a New Zealand base map to retrieve soil information relating to a variety of soil properties at that location. This information can be saved, shared and reused. The mapping tool's primary map layers are soil properties or classes, i.e. delineated areas that are labelled with the soil family name. Each soil family is defined as a unique combination of attributes (NZSC classification, parent material, rock type, dominant texture and permeability class).

What it can tell you

Using S-map Online you can

explore interactive soil maps of soil properties such as soil drainage and available water
learn about the soil in your backyard or paddock
view detailed information about a soil class or attribute
for specific locations, view and download soil factsheets that provide more detailed knowledge of soil properties and information relevant to a variety of potential uses
generate a report of the areas of key soil properties within a land parcel or other boundary
create custom PDF soil maps for printing
use your soil observations to identify S-map siblings that are a close match.

How you use it

The maps are interactive so you can navigate the map and easily explore its content. You can find your area of interest by searching by location, address or coordinates or just navigate to a location using the zoom and pan features. You can place pins on the map, draw polygons or select land parcels to define an area you are interested in obtaining soil information for.

Go to a mapping introduction tool on the Landcare Research website

Go to a detailed walk-through of the features of the mapping tool on the Landcare Research website