Researchers from Our Land and Water have identified gaps in New Zealand’s current water quality monitoring methods and networks that need to be filled.
A recently released guidance paper, Designing Freshwater Monitoring Systems to Detect Early Improvement, says regional councils need help to design monitoring programmes that will measure the effectiveness of actions taken to improve freshwater, and to help select appropriate monitoring technologies that will enable early detection of improvement.
It says people taking action on the ground need monitoring programmes that provide information on what actions have the most impact, which will help prioritise the most effective ones to take.
Dr Olivier Ausseil, a freshwater scientist at Aquanet Consulting who coordinated one of two groups that worked on the project, says a lot of time, effort and money has been invested in improving freshwater in NZ, including mitigation plans, but there is not a lot of evidence available as to how those plans have worked in the past.
He says a catchment or sub-catchment group might want to improve a river or stream and form a mitigation plan that brings together a range of actions, such as erosion control and riparian planting, but there’s a lack of robust information as to what is the most effective, depending on individual situations that might vary due to climatic conditions.
The research he was involved in focused on how to best accurately measure change and improvement, detecting it as early and efficiently as possible, but also establishing a cause and effect relationship (which mitigations have made the improvement).
Dr Rogier Westerhoff, senior scientist at GNS Science who coordinated the second working group, says NZ relies on what’s known as state of the environment monitoring, which regional councils are responsible for, that typically measures longer-term freshwater quality rather than detecting the actual effect of improvement actions.
Ausseil says state of the environment monitoring is very good at providing what the current state of freshwater is and what the long-term changes are but because it hasn’t been designed specifically with a mitigation plan in mind, although it might pick up improvements, there’s often a struggle to establish a cause and effect relationship to say exactly what caused the improvement.
“Quite often we end up in a situation where we can’t actually conclude robustly whether it’s worked or not. That’s what we’re hoping to address better,” Westerhoff said.
“It’s about having tools that are available and suited for a range of end-users to use, including farmers.
“That’s not a criticism of what councils do in terms of state of the environment monitoring, it’s designed for a purpose and does a really good job of that.
“What we’re talking about is monitoring for a different purpose, in addition to the state of the environment monitoring. That needs to stay.
“We’re talking about complementing it and bringing more detail, more refined information.”
Westerhoff’s working group built a comprehensive inventory of monitoring technologies currently and potentially available in the near future, ranging from manual grab samples to advanced sensors to satellite technologies, for a range of attributes, reading for the usual suspects of nitrate or phosphate, through to things like water colour or soil moisture.
The work undertaken so far is phase one of what it’s hoped will be a longer-term project.
The initial phase was a proof-of-concept investigation, but the aim is that in the future it will be extended to putting suitable tools in the hands of organisations and people who want to improve water quality, including farmers and primary sector groups.
Ausseil says the level of appetite for suitable tools is very high.
“Everyone realises that we’re spending so much time and money and effort on improving our freshwater, but we really want to be able to understand as quickly as we can whether we are on the right track,” Ausseil said.
“What we’re trying to do here is pick up on the early indicators of success, something that could tell us, ‘yes, actually, we are on track, or no, actually we need to do more,’ and be part of that feedback between action, monitoring and modelling – how all that can work together to get to that outcome more efficiently.”
Westerhoff says they want people involved in freshwater monitoring to be as enthusiastic as possible but to also take a coordinated approach.
“If everyone just starts monitoring with any technique or technology, it might be that one is of a much lower-quality than another,” Westerhoff said.
“That’s why we developed this inventory of technologies, so that people can see what could be available for monitoring specific effects of freshwater improvement.
“Sometimes a monthly grab sample might be enough, or sometimes it might require measuring much more frequently.”
The work is designed to dovetail into findings from another Our Land and Water working group, which has been working on enacting Te Mana o te Wai, a central plank of government freshwater policy that aims to build capacity and capability for Māori to participate in and make decisions for freshwater management.
It’s been engaging with iwi and hapū over what Te Mana o Te Wai means to them and how they can most effectively communicate the needs of waterways to councils.
That work is due to be released shortly.
