In 1986, the National Mapping Resource Information Authority (NAMRIA) conducted a national land use inventory using satellite imagery from the French SPOT earth observation satellite. In 1993, the National Land Use Act was registered for approval of Philippine Congress for lack of a national land use policy. To date, the national guidelines for land and water use remain docketed for legislative discussion.

The first ESSC water catchment research, undertaken in 1994, was conducted at the small scale where limited aspects of the current hydrological understanding can be consolidated to a national scale. The range and intensity of the area influences today within other catchments is increasing and the impacts have yet to be fully understood, particularly in relation to agriculture and other local business not agri related, and households. Also a better understanding is needed of how these catchmemts are likely to behave under future and extreme metereological conditions. Hence, local and provincial management plans for these catchments need to be underpinned by scientific/technical understandings as to how hydrological and ecological regimes interact in these catchments.

The continuing effort of ESSC is to collect primary data from automated weather stations (AWS), manual rain guages, stream gauges, and weirs in catchments where we operate. The interface of primary hydrological data and geoinformatics with community-derived data continue to develop ESSC's research standards and methods on understanding the specifics of water and watershed dynamics.

Research standards that were developed address both well-established and emerging NRM applications in biodiversity, climate change, and criteria and indicators development for sustainable forest management (SFM) and integrated watershed resource management (IWRM). This allow the institute to present the analyses more comprehensively to the community, local government units, regional line agencies to provide them bases for understanding the change and policy adaptation needed in water and nutrient resource sustainability in the uplands.