How to Map your Watershed Plans

New Zealand’s renowned clean, green image is under threat from a multitude of environmental pressures, changing land use practices and human activities. Detailed watershed plans are one of the ways to identify and combat these pressures on New Zealand’s freshwater and coastal environments. However, watershed plans can be difficult to share with a wider non-technical audience. Using the latest mapping technology is an effective way to break down complex watershed plans and disseminate these with the wider public.

This paper discusses the uses, benefits, and challenges of interactive mapping for watershed plans, and discusses some of the interactive mapping technologies available. It also highlights several geospatial techniques which can be used to provide additional benefits from spatial data and overcome some of the limitations of interactive mapping. Finally, it discusses the benefits of a Story Mapping, a modern technique used to share interactive maps supported by multimedia content and narrative text.

Auckland Council has recently begun developing stage 1 of its integrated watershed plan. This approach breaks the Auckland Region down into ten key watersheds and identifies the current quality state of the region’s freshwater and coastal environments. Auckland Council has created an online tool for communicating watershed plans; the latest draft version of this tool is a series of interactive online multimedia maps which presents the current state overview of Auckland’s watersheds and identifies the leading environmental and population pressure concerns. Where appropriate, examples will be drawn from this watershed planning tool and shown here.