Freshwater and forecasting our Fieldays focus

The largest agribusiness event in the Southern Hemisphere is just around the corner. NIWA has been a longtime exhibitor at the Fieldays event. This year, our exhibit is designed to spark conversations and is themed around freshwater ecosystem health and weather forecasting.  

The National Agricultural Fieldays are being held at Hamilton's Mystery Creek between 12 – 15 June 2019. You can find us at PC 39-41. 

Over 130,000 people are expected to pass through the gates over the four days of the event. For NIWA, it's an important opportunity to educate the public and talk about what we've got to offer the agricultural sector. 

The intention of the stand is that visitors passing through learn something new about the environment or have a eureka moment about how the choices each of us make can impact the environment.  

The centrepiece of the NIWA Fieldays stand will be two cylindrical aquarium tanks. One will have native fish and plants in a good quality freshwater environment; the other, pest fish and plants in a degraded environment. 

Visitors will be offered a virtual reality experience where they can don a visor and go diving in the Rotorua lakes with NIWA scientists as they undertake LakeSPI monitoring, using 360° footage shot by and with NIWA divers Rod Budd, Aleki Tamoepeau and Tracey Burton and videographer Stu Mackay.  

Freshwater ecosystem conversations will be supported by a large 2x2m infographic where a traditional water cycle landscape will have a human action overlay. There’s also a modelling activity where visitors can explore actions they are taking now (and could take in the future) to improve freshwater health. 

Alongside our freshwater activity a display will showcase NIWA’s environmental modelling and visual communication capability.  

As in previous years, our forecasting services team will also be at Fieldays to answer farmers’ weather and climate questions.