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


Related PDFs
PDF – Citizen Science Case Studies
PDF – Citizen Science Inventory
PDF – Hooked on Native Fish
PDF – Invertebrate Identification Challenge
PDF – Estuary Monitoring Toolkit Turning the Tide
PDF – Native Fish Fact Sheet
PDF – Sampling Guidelines