WATER MONITORING

Water Monitoring

Water Monitoring is an essential part of catchment management. It gives you a starting point, helps you to plan, and continued monitoring can show you what improvements have been made.

Here are some great questions to ask yourself before you begin monitoring:
– What are the water quality issues?
– What are the best methods to deal with these issues?
– What are the goals? Are they measurable?
– How do we set up a monitoring program to measure the success?
– Will the monitoring methods provide adequate feedback to make management decisions?

SHMAK kits:

SHMAK kits or Stream Health Monitoring and Assessment Kits help to measure the health and wellbeing of your waterways.

These are produced by NIWA and the contents are outlined here: https://niwa.co.nz/freshwater/management-tools/water-quality-tools/stream-health-monitoring-and-assessment-kit

For information on costs and purchasing contact instruments@niwa.co.nz

It would also pay to contact your regional council in case they have a kit available for loan.

Video Resources

This video outlines the contents of a SHAMK kit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kul8pgnty_0

This is an amusing video on water testing by the brilliant young minds at Te Aho Tu Roa (The Maori arm of Enviroschools): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je4ndimZaCU

NZLT How to take a water sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB7XY3wD1-E