Geology, landforms and soils of the Waipara and Waikari regions of North Canterbury with an emphasis on lands used for viticulture

Abstract

Soils play an important role in grape growing and wine making. Soils anchor the vine and act a reservoir of water and nutrients essential for growth. Soils influence the vine microclimate and therefore wine characteristics. ... This report is organized into 16 chapters, and these can be grouped into three part. The first part includes this introduction, and chapters on geological history, landform history and and overview of the soils within the the Waipara and Waikari regions of North Canterbury. This last chapter includes a summary table listing the landforms, regolith, soil and their New Zealand Soil Classification and maps of the landforms and dominant soil series associated with wine growing in North Canterbury. The second part of the report is ordered using the landform relationships of the predominant soils established in the previous section. This is referred to as a physiographic order from the highest and steepest parts of the landscape to the youngest surfaces alongside streams and rivers and on recently active fans. There are eight sections in this part and all available information on the soils’ morphology (description) and chemistry are included in this section up to the time of completion of this report. The third part of the report includes three chapters. The first section is a discussion of soil mapping and the definition of terms associated with soil mapping. These include field identification of soil profiles and soil profile description and the definition of soil horizon notation used in this report and field determination of soil texture, consistence and structure. A simple field method for determining the presence of primary and secondary calcium carbonate using a dilute acid is described. This chapter concludes with the New Zealand Soil Classification (Hewitt, 2010) relevant to the soils of North Canterbury described in this report. The next chapter is a discussion on the interpretation of soil chemistry data. The final chapter in this section comprises tables listing the vineyards of the Waipara and Waikari regions of North Canterbury grouped by the dominant soil or combinations of soils within vineyards. The location of Waipara vineyards are plotted on three maps, of the Omihi Valley, north of the Waipara River and the southern part of the Omihi valley, and south of the Waipara River. This information was last updated in January 2014.