OVERSEER® is an agricultural management tool which assists farmers and their advisers to examine nutrient use and movements within a farm to optimise production and environmental outcomes. The computer model calculates and estimates the nutrient flows in a productive farming system and identifies risk for environmental impacts through nutrient loss, including run off and leaching, and greenhouse gas emissions.
OVERSEER® is a nutrient budgeting model that is widely used in New Zealand and is required to be used under some regional council policies. It can assist farmers and regulators with the following:
Is a useful fertiliser planning tool on its own, additional software is used by fertiliser companies to provide farm specific econometric information for further developing fertiliser recommendations. This information can support farmers and their advisors in planning nutrient use and assessing the potential environmental losses. OVERSEER® modelling can also support environmental policy development, most notably around Lake Taupo and as a part of Horizons One Plan. OVERSEER® does not include economic analysis, so outputs needs to be combined with other economic models to assess impacts of options on the farm business.
The OVERSEER® model has its own website which provides a full explanation of the model, how to use it, benefits of use, and it provides a range of publications and science papers. https://www.overseer.org.nz/
Latest Version | 6.3.0 (2018) |
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State of Development | Released and updated |
Current Development Activity | Overseer Farm Modelling (FM) software - a new online application of Overseer is due for release in May 2018 |
Outcome Areas | Environmental |
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Management Domains | Land, Freshwater |
Subdomains | Contaminant Losses, Crop/Farm Systems |
Intended End Users | Fertiliser representatives, farmers, scientists, policy researchers |
Spatial Resolutions | Unknown |
Spatial Extents | Land or Business Unit |
Spatial Dimensions | 1D |
Temporal Resolutions | Years |
Temporal Extents | Unknown |
Steady State or Dynamic | Steady State |
Level of Integration | Environmental |
Key Input Data | Land Use, Rainfall |
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Input Data Formats | XLS(X) |
Key Output Data | Drainage nutrient loss |
Open/Closed Source | Closed Source |
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Licence Type | No Licence |
Operating Systems | MS Windows |
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Software Needed | Unknown |
User Interface | Graphical desktop |
Ease of Use | Easy |
Use in Policy Process | Plan (Policy Formulation), Do (Policy Implementation), Check (Policy Evaluation) |
Documentation | For Manuals, release notes, guides and technical manuals see: https://www.overseer.org.nz/technical-description-of-overseer |
Support | Training courses available |
Methods included for managing uncertainty | https://www.overseer.org.nz/uncertainty-in-model-results |
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Analytical Techniques | Input/output |
Model Structure |
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Keywords | fertiliser, nutrient budgeting, nutrient management planning, greenhouse gas |
Linkages to other Models | |
Key References | See: https://www.overseer.org.nz/ for general information or https://www.overseer.org.nz/publications for range of publications Technical Description of OVERSEER - 2015 (PDF)
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Environment Canterbury (ECan) and the Lower Waitaki Zone Committee (ZC) have been running a collaborative community process to help decide on water quality and quantity limits for the proposed South Canterbury Coastal Streams (SCCS) area.
For examples of OVERSEER use see: https://www.overseer.org.nz/publications
Using OVERSEER in Regulation - 2016 (PDF)
Using OVERSEER within the Rules for the Lake Rotorua Catchment - 2014 (PDF)
South Canterbury: Fietjie 2014 Estimating nitrogen loss from land uses in the hill country of the South Canterbury Coastal (SCCS) area Environment Canterbury report no. R14/129