Freshwater

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

The Fish Passage Assessment Tool has been developed to provide an easy to use, practical tool for recording instream structures and assessing their likely impact on fish movements and river connectivity.

Previous research has identified significant unintended water loss (surface runoff and groundwater recharge) on pallic soils, predominately on hillslopes, under spray irrigation.

Currently there are gaps in understanding of user decision making processes and public needs and requirements for river forecasting in New Zealand. This project aims to bridge NIWA river forecasting aspirations and capabilities with both the public and decision makers’ requirements.

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

NZWaM-Hydro is scalable, and the hydrological relationships in the model are transferable between locations.

Bringing together leading scientific organisations and regional councils, this project aims to develop a sophisticated computer modelling framework that will enable users to accurately predict how much freshwater is available, where it has come from, and how quickly it moves through New Zealand catchments.

NIWA scientists are hoping they may one day be able to “listen” to kelp forests in the waters around New Zealand to find out how they are faring.

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.

Humans don't always make it easy on fish to get where they are going. New Zealand's first national set of Fish Passage Guidelines – co-developed by NIWA - is expected to help.