NZWaM - Hydro: Our partners

Partners and their roles

The NZWaM – Hydro project is led by NIWA but all work is conducted in collaboration with our project partners.

NIWA is responsible for developing:

• a high-resolution digital river network and the associated harmonised geospatial database (hydro-geofabric) that incorporates climate, soil classes, land cover, surface-water isotopes, soil and aquifer hydraulic properties, groundwater and many other datasets

• the surface-water component of the modelling framework, and coupling it to the groundwater-flow and water-age models

• NZWaM-HydroDesk software

• a New Zealand Benchmarking Framework to assess validity and transferability of process understanding across New Zealand.

GNS Science is responsible for developing:

• national datasets of aquifer hydraulic properties

• compatible groundwater-flow and age models in test catchments

• calibration of these models with groundwater age-tracer data

• an uncertainty framework that will be applied in the surface water and groundwater space.

Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research is responsible for developing:

• national datasets of soil hydraulic properties (based on development of the S-map next-generation project) across spatial scales.

Environment Southland, Horizons Regional Council and Gisborne District Council are research partners and are co-designing outputs and applications for the project. Our Regional Council partners are involved in designing the research, and the network, and collecting the required data and will provide ongoing input and feedback from user perspective in the project. In addition, their ongoing input and feedback from a user perspective is integral for the development and future improvements of NZWaM - Hydro.