Consistent and Dependable Monitoring
New Zealand is currently unable to paint a national picture of the state of the country’s waters, largely due to inconsistency in monitoring data between regions. We made a major contribution to the NEMaR (National Environmental Monitoring and Assessment) project that was developed to address this need. A series of reports arising from NEMaR (available on the Ministry for Environment’s website) recommend:
- National reporting indicators for water (we expect these will also be used in regional SoE reporting).
- Variables (attributes of water) to be measured together with measurement protocols and quality assurance (QA).
- Networks of monitoring sites.
For further information, our report (Davies-Colley et al., 2012a), identifies and recommends national freshwater monitoring protocols for core river water quality, river bio-monitoring, and lake monitoring variables.
Recommended regional council protocols and quality assurance methods are described in a second report. A third report (McBride et al., 2013) consolidates the recommendations and costs of making the transition to consistent regional monitoring across the country.
The VMO programme has added value to NEMaR by providing on-going advice to regional council SoE monitoring staff, and presenting overviews at national conferences and hui.