Water Monitoring

Water Monitoring - it is an essential part to catchment management. It gives you a starting point, helps you to plan, and continued monitoring can show you what improvements have been made.
Here are some great questions to ask yourself before you begin monitoring:
- What are the water quality issues?
- What are the best methods to deal with these issues?
- What are the goals? Are they measurable?
- How do we set up a monitoring program to measure the success?
- Will the monitoring methods provide adequate feedback to make management decisions?

SHMAK kits:
SHMAK kits or Stream Health Monitoring and Assessment Kits help to measure the health and wellbeing of your waterways.
These are produced by NIWA and the contents are outlined here: https://niwa.co.nz/freshwater/management-tools/water-quality-tools/stream-health-monitoring-and-assessment-kit
For information on costs and purchasing contact Stuart Escott on 03 343 7888 or [email protected] (and copy in [email protected] so if he’s away someone else can come back to you).
It would also pay to contact your regional council in case they have a kit available for loan.
This video outlines the contents of a SHAMK kit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kul8pgnty_0
Another great videos explaining more detail about how to do water testing: https://www.youtube.com/user/NZNIWA/videos
A great video was made as part of the kaitiaki Raukawa Project on using the SHMAK kits.
https://www.youtube.com/Freshwater Monitoring
This is an amusing video on water testing by the brilliant young minds at Te Aho Tu Roa (The Maori arm of Enviroschools). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je4ndimZaCU
How to take a water sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB7XY3wD1-E
Here are some resources and documents that you might find helpful. Click below to download.
Related Documents
Uploads
- Cenlab Sampling Guidelines
- Citizen Science Case Studies 2018
- Citizen Science Inventory 2018
- CitSci Case Studies 2018 Technology LR (1)
- CitSci Case Studies 2018 Water Qual Monitoring LR (1)
- Estuary Monitoring Toolkit Turning The Tide 2006
- Invertebrate Identification Challenge (1)
- Native Fish Factsheets 2011 English (1)
- Native Fish Factsheets 2015 Te Reo (1)
- Native Fish In Waikato River A3 Poster 2014 (1)
- NIWA Freshwater Invertebrate Identification Guide A3
- Stream Health Assessment Worksheet
- TL Observation & Measurement Checklist 2018
- TL Water Quality Report Card 2018
- Water Quality Terms
- Water Sampling Factsheet
- WETMAK Kit 2014