Agriculture

This project aims to increase our knowledge of aquatic ecosystems and their restoration, and apply this to degraded streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries.

Improvements in data and climate science mean forecasters are able to predict patterns much further ahead and in far greater detail. Melissa Bray looks at what this may mean for farmers.

This guide discusses design principles and provides high-level information about the likely performance of riparian buffers.

IrriSET helps farmers to understand the economic viability and environmental efficiency of various irrigation strategies and prioritise their irrigation investments.

Nutrients, sediment, and microbial contaminants are mobilized from urban and agricultural landscapes and enter streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries. These contaminants can degrade water quality, ecological health, and cultural values.

Almost half of Aotearoa New Zealand’s CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. This is a much higher proportion than most other countries – globally, agricultural emissions average around 7.5% of a country’s total emissions.

Irrigation Insight is a joint industry programme funded by MBIE to examine, on working farms, the ease and effectiveness of using high-resolution weather forecasting, production potential, and drainage estimations for on-farm water management.

Diquat is a herbicide (chemical) that has been used in New Zealand for many decades for submerged (underwater) weed control and also on agricultural crops. It is registered for freshwater use in New Zealand.

Constructed wetlands, detention bunds, woodchip denitrification filters and planted riparian buffers are examples of a growing suite of edge-of-field and farm-scale mitigation systems that are being trialled across rural New Zealand to reduce the impact of diffuse pollution on freshwater quality

Farmers visiting Fieldays at Mystery Creek in June could not have missed the take-home message: that science and innovation are key to their continued success.

A project to restore a stream catchment in Kaikōura—damaged in the 2016 earthquake—is being described as inspirational by NIWA scientists.