Community Monitoring to Support Community Decisions
We are identifying how community monitoring can support collaborative decision-making, and are also investigating the complementary relationships between community, cultural, and scientific monitoring of local waterways.
This is a major area of interest across New Zealand, and seems all the more important because community monitoring seems a logical extension of community collaboration in water planning. Community groups, including iwi, are likely to want to be involved in the whole policy cycle so that they know and can own the fate of ‘their’ water. We see community monitoring as a win-win for regional councils and community groups – the council providing encouragement and technical support to the community group and the community group acting as eyes in the field to extend the council’s monitoring coverage.
The main research focus is to compare the monitoring results of properly resourced community groups with the professional monitoring undertaken by regional councils. Nine streams from Auckland to Nelson are being monitoring simultaneously (same site, date, and time) by community groups and regional councils over an 18 month period. Community groups are using an updated version of NIWA’s SHMAK (Stream Health Monitoring and Assessment Kit) equipment for their monitoring. They measure water quality and algal growth monthly, and stream invertebrates and habitat every six months. Results at the halfway point have been collated and are available. We are working continually with the community volunteers to resolve issues that have reduced accuracy and reliability.
Selected useful findings
- Engaging communities in freshwater monitoring
Community monitoring can increase the amount and scope of data on the state and condition of freshwater as well as provide many social benefits and raise public awareness. The aim of this study was to discover the motivation for members of community groups to take part in the monitoring, the benefits they and their communities had gained, whether monitoring would encourage them to engage in council-led freshwater planning processes, and what support would enable and encourage them to continue monitoring long-term. There is also an Ecological Economics journal article outlining the findings.