Freshwater

Water quality in urban streams and stormwater systems is frequently poor and highly variable, across both space and time. Traditional monthly grab sampling is rarely adequate to characterise contaminant concentrations during wet weather events.

The tiny inanga have been plucked from Waikato streams and held in a darkened laboratory for the last month, undertaking highly advanced testing to find the strongest, fittest and fastest fish.

In a secret training location on the outskirts of Hamilton, a squad of whitebait is being put through its paces by fish scientists.

Weather and climate experts from around the world are meeting in Wellington next week to discuss the critical need for accurate forecasting to cope with a changing climate.

Most of the plastic in the ocean originates on land, being carried to the estuaries and coasts by rivers. Managing this plastic on land before it reaches the river could be the key to stemming the tide of marine-bound plastics. The aim of this project is to understand the sources and fate of plastic pollution carried by urban rivers using the Kaiwharawhara Stream as a case study.

It may be rubbish to everyone else, but to Amanda Valois each little scrap of plastic on a river bank or in a waterway tells a valuable story.

If you think science and art have nothing in common, think again. At environmental science institute NIWA, it’s all about one inspiring the other.

As a young child growing up on an Irish farm, one of Eimear Egan’s chores was to regularly clean out the well from where her family drew its drinking water. In the well lived a large eel that, no matter how many times it was shifted, just kept coming back.

Christchurch’s Red Zone is to be the focal point of a scientific experiment involving street lights and insects over summer. 

NIWA scientists have made an important breakthrough in the battle to save New Zealand’s freshwater mussels.