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The 2208 km 2 Waipaoa River catchment, the onshore portion of the Waipaoa source-to-sink (S2S) sedimentary system in the East Coast of New Zealand’s North Island, is a tremendously data-rich study area for obtaining insights into catchment function and connectivity (Kuehl et al. 2016). There have been longstanding concerns about erosion severity and mitigation dating back to 1895 (Hill, 1895). High rates of erosion in the Waipaoa have been the defining catchment management issue since the mid-twentieth century, triggered by forest clearance for pastoral agriculture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and primed by a combination of highly erodible lithologies, steepland terrain, regular intense storm events, and slopes undercut by postglacial river incision. The magnitude of erosion in the East Coast Region since European forest clearance has exceeded that in any other part of New Zealand …