Ecological monitoring

NIWA is helping to ensure that New Zealand’s unique and iconic freshwater species are healthy, abundant and thriving.

Download the entire manual or just the chapters you need. A printed version is also available.

Tiny, translucent eels may hold the answers to one of the fish world’s great mysteries. Zen Gregor investigates.

This manual prescribes a set of sampling and analysis protocols applicable to most of the common stream habitats in New Zealand.

How healthy is your stream? SHMAK - the New Zealand Stream Health Monitoring and Assessment Kit - has been designed to help you find out.

Downloadable and printable guides on identification of common freshwater invertebrates found in New Zealand waterways and lakes.

The condition of many NZ lakes is under threat from land-use changes and the invasion of alien aquatic plants.

Submerged plants have a number of advantages that favour their use as indicators of lake ecological condition.

A summary of the LakeSPI method.

LakeSPI delivers information that is directly applicable to lake-ecosystem conservation and management.

LakeSPI can be used in many ways depending on what the interests or management needs are for a lake.

LakeSPI (Lake Submerged Plant Indicators) is based on the principle that New Zealand lakes can be characterised by the composition of native and invasive plants growing in them, and the depths to which these plants grow.