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Environmental flow tools

Tools and software to assist with determining and managing environmental flows.

Environmental Flows programme

The programme has produced a series of tools and software to assist with assessing ecological flow requirements in rivers.

Determine which tool suits your needs

New Zealand River Maps 

New Zealand River Maps is an interactive web-based application for exploring national scale predictions of a suite of river environmental variables, including water quality, hydrology, bed sediment size, invertebrate metrics, fish presence, bed sediment cover and water allocation.

EFlows Explorer

The eFlows Explorer webtool is designed to aid broad-scale river flow management planning across New Zealand. is intended to aid understanding of how minimum flow and total allocation can be set for all river reaches across a catchment or region, by demonstrating how they interact with reliability of water supply and example environmental metrics representing losses in total area of aquatic habitat.

Environmental Flows Strategic Allocation Platform (EFSAP)  

This a water planning and management tool designed to assist with setting regional or large scale water resource use limits. It predicts how limits on water take and minimum residual river flows can be designed to optimise reliability of water use and effects on instream environments. 

Cumulative Hydrological Effects Simulator (CHES)

The Cumulative Hydrological Effects Simulator software predicts how water flows at a catchment scale will change under a combination of water uses and what these flow changes mean in terms of reliability of water supply and effects on instream environmental values. CHES operates on a daily flow time-series basis and is underpinned by outputs from hydrological models (e.g. TOPNET, ELFMOD).

Empirical Longitudinal Flow MODel (ELFMOD)

This is a statistical tool for estimating flows at multiple points along rivers subject to surface/ground-water exchanges, using both measured flow at selected sites and other predictor variables such as rainfall and groundwater levels.  ELFMOD can visually represent how river flow changes with time and distance.

Water Allocation Impacts on River Attributes (Waiora)

Water Allocation Impacts on River Attributes is a decision-support system designed to provide guidance on whether a water take or discharge could have adverse impacts on selected environmental variables, including dissolved oxygen, water temperature, ammonia and aquatic habitat.

River Environment Classification (REC)

The River Environment Classification is a spatial framework for regional (or larger) scale environmental monitoring and reporting, environmental assessment and management.  The REC maps a host of information about the physical characteristics of New Zealand’s rivers, including catchment climate, topography, geology and land cover. Information is mapped by individual river segment for the entire national river network. The current version available is version 2 (REC2).

New Zealand streamflow depletion model: A tool for sustainable water resource management

Intensifying competition for water is increasing pressure on finite water resources (surface and groundwater), which manifests itself as depleted stream flows. As the concerns over water resources and the environment increase, the importance of combined water management, which acknowledges the integrated nature of groundwater and surface water, and manages them as a single resource, is critical to sustaining both human society and aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. This tool can be used by regional and district councils, central government agencies, water managers, catchment groups, hydroelectric generators, researchers, and consultants.