In 2015, local iwi Te Runanganui o Ngāti Porou adopted a joint management agreement with Gisborne District Council to ensure that natural resources are managed in line with freshwater policy and iwi rights are recognised, enabling Ngāti Porou to have a greater voice in resource decision making.

One example of ongoing decisions that are being made in consultation with Ngāti Porou involve the provision of gravel extraction consents for the Waiapu river. In recent years, the amount of gravel being extracted commercially from the Waiapu river has been increasing. This resource represents a substantial economic opportunity but is also an activity that is in conflict with community aspirations to restore and rehabilitate the river.

Here, LiDAR has been a very useful tool in helping both council and iwi sustainably manage the environmental impact of gravel extraction to protect the mauri of the river. The Waiapu river is a complex system and there are places in the river identifiable with LiDAR where gravel is aggradating (accumulating). It would be more sustainable to extract material from these areas to mitigate aggradation issues as opposed to overextracting in areas where gravel is leaving the river. Overextraction of gravel from an area where there is no influx would cause the river to narrow and contract, triggering erosion and impacting the balance of the river system and surrounding ecology.

In 2016 Toitū Te Whenua LINZ in partnership with Regional Councils began a project to procure and make available a nationally consistent baseline elevation data set for Aotearoa New Zealand. By 2024, 80% of the country will be covered.

Elevation data or LiDAR (light detection and ranging) is a technology using laser sensors mounted on aircraft that fly over a landscape to capture a 3D view of the land. The sensor measures the time it takes for light to travel back and forth from the sensor to the ground. Because the sensor can rapidly pulse a laser beam, it can capture a "point cloud" of highly accurate 3D measurements – like a digital twin of the landscape.