Managing carbon emissions through riparian design on an Otago farm in Aotearoa NZ : A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University

Abstract

The NZ Government has established the Zero Carbon Amendment Act (2019) following the Paris Agreement (2015) to mitigate the ongoing impacts to reduce NZ’s net GHG emissions. Farmers are required to prepare farm emission budgets, fence off and plant areas around freshwater to meet the new requirements from the government. This project addresses the design side of riparian corridors within a family-farm system. The aim of this project is to use concepts from landscape ecology to guide riparian planting design on a family farm in Otago high country to better manage the farm’s carbon emissions. As plants and soils have different carbon storage capacities, this project will investigate two approaches; (a) Overseer software application to calculate the overall farm GHG emissions and (b) formulae from the literature to calculate the carbon stored in paddock soils and key plant species in a creek corridor. Over 10 years of farming in the Manuherikia Valley the system has intensified with an increase in irrigation and land conversion. At the valley and farm scale, riparian corridors have also been lost. Lauder Station’s GHG emissions have been found to be similar to the average for high country farms in NZ, with further work needed to offset the emissions. This work will be useful to demonstrate to Otago farmers how to protect waterways, manage the GHG emissions from the farm system and work towards becoming carbon zero.