Pollution

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.

New Zealand is a land of erosion. We’re losing about 192 million tonnes of soil a year, according to the latest report Our Land 2018, from the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics NZ.

NIWA offers a range of standard toxicity tests for both freshwater and marine environments.

Estuaries are at the bottom of the freshwater drainage network and, effectively, are a part of it. This means that every time we act to protect and enhance streams and rivers we are also benefiting the estuary at the downstream end.

When soils erode, sediments are washed into waterways.

NIWA's research on freshwater monitoring and reporting is one of three research areas within the 'Values, Monitoring and Outcomes' (VMO) programme led by Landcare Research.

As we have mentioned many times, new species can be found literally at our door step. But who has found a new species in their pantry?

A new method of testing air quality in towns around New Zealand has been developed by NIWA scientists that could revolutionise the way communities can measure and control pollution.

Changes in New Zealand air quality due to COVID-19 level restrictions.

Understanding and predicting the sources of contaminants, developing technologies to clean up the sources, and understanding the consequences of water quality degradation for aquatic ecosystems and human use of waterways.

NIWA has developed an Urban Stormwater Contaminant (USC) model to enable urban planners to predict sedimentation and heavy metal accumulation in estuaries and identify problem areas in order to target mitigation measures.