Measurements of inorganic ion composition of monthly/fortnightly rainfall samples collected at Kelburn, Lauder, Puruki. Measurement locations and dates are given below: Kelburn (41.17° S, 174.46° E) from March 1983 to March 1992 Lauder (45.02° S, 169.41° E) from July 1982 to Oct 1993 Puruki (38.43° S, 176.22° E) from July 1989 to Feb1991

New Zealand Exclusive Economic Zone: The exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is a zone extending from the outer limits of the territorial sea to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines of the territorial sea in which New Zealand, as the coastal state, has sovereign rights over the living and non living resources of the sea and seabed and other states have certain freedoms, including the freedoms of navigation and overflight. Maritime Boundary Definitions: http://www.linz.govt.nz/hydro/nautical-info/maritime-boundaries/definitions#zones Further References: http://www.linz.govt.nz/hydro/nautical-info/maritime-boundaries

The New Zealand Land Cover Database (LCDB) is a multi-temporal, thematic classification of New Zealand's land cover. It contains 33 mainland classes (35 including the offshore Chatham Islands). The classification has evolved from version to version but backward compatibility has been maintained. Geographic features are described by a polygon boundary, a land cover code, and a land cover name at each of four nominal time steps; summer 1996/97, summer 2001/02, summer 2008/09, and summer 2012/13. The data set is designed to complement in theme, scale and accuracy, Land Information New Zealand’s 1:50,000 topographic database. LCDB is suitable for use in national and regional state-of-environment monitoring, forest and shrubland inventory, biodiversity assessment, trend analysis and infrastructure planning. The classification used in LCDB v4.1 is presented in the document 'LCDBClassesAtVersion4.1.pdf' and a table correlating LCDB classes over all four LCDB versions is presented in the document 'LCDBClassCorrelations.pdf'. Both of these documents are available as an attachment to this dataset in the LRIS portal (https://lris.scinfo.org.nz/) and on the LCDB project site (www.lcdb.scinfo.org.nz). LCDB v4.1 was released in July 2015 and includes corrections to all time steps 1996/97, 2001/02, 2008/09 and 2012/13. A description of work undertaken for this release (including that in all earlier releases) is presented in the Lineage section. Of particular note at 4.1 is the re-mapping of Chatham Islands - first mapped at version 2, but then not continued through versions 3.0, 3.3, and 4.0 because of resource constraints. “EditAuthority” and "EditDate" are attributes, maintained since version 3.0 to indicate authorship and nominal date of polygon mapping, edit or change. The data is referenced to the New Zealand Transverse Mercator 2000 projection (NZTM2000) which uses the NZ Geodetic Datum 2000 (NZGD2000). https://koordinates.com/from/lris.scinfo.org.nz/layer/48423/Errors in the data due to misclassification (not changes since mapping) or poor delineation can be reported to Landcare Research for inclusion in the next release using the online feedback mechanisms in https://lris.scinfo.org.nz/.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) has been commissioned by the Ministry for the Environment to estimate 11 components of the national and regional water balance of New Zealand for each of the 20 years from 1 July 1994 to 30 June 2014. This information is for use by Statistics New Zealand in a set of annual national water accounts they are developing, as part of a set of environmental accounts for New Zealand. Specifically, this work is a contribution to the Water Physical Stock Accounts. The data were analysed to summarise the water stock accounts of New Zealand and the 16 regions administered by regional councils or unitary authorities,using a combination of direct measurement and modelled data. The average annual precipitation across the country was 550,000 m3/year (equal to over nine times the volume of Lake Taupo), a reduction from previous years’ calculations. Roughly 20% of this evaporates before reaching the coast, leaving an average of 440,000 million m3/year. There is substantial variation in this water flux from year to year due to a range of climatic factors. Changes in storage – lakes, soil moisture, snow, and ice – represent very small components of the annual water balance. Use of water for hydroelectric power generation represents a significant portion of the nation’s freshwater resource, equating to 36% of the total freshwater flows, but this figure includes multiple use of water within the same catchment. Water fluxes at the regional scale vary depending on the region’s size as well as the spatial variability in the delivery and movement of water. The West Coast receives the largest portion of precipitation – 26% of the national total – and possesses 30% of the nation’s freshwater flow. Nelson City, due to its small size, accounts for the smallest portion in both cases. Canterbury accounts for the greatest portion of hydro-generation water use (mainly for the Waitaki scheme), followed by Waikato. Data are for 11 water balance components: 1. Precipitation 2. Inflows from rivers (regional scale only) 3. Evapotranspiration 4. Abstraction by hydro-generation companies 5. Discharges by hydro-generation companies 6. Outflows to sea from surface water 7. Outflows to other regions (regional scale only) 8. Net change in lakes and reservoirs 9. Net change in soil moisture 10. Net change in snow 11. Net change in ice

This is the eighteenth annual report for monitoring of stream habitat and biota (surveys conducted summer and end of winter) to evaluate the effects of activities associated with the harvest of Tairua Forest. Data collection and analysis is described in this report for the winter 2010 and summer 2011 surveys (7 sites). The report incorporates findings from earlier surveys (since 1993) to define the magnitude and duration of the effects of forestry management activities, especially harvesting, on these stream attributes.

The TopNet hydrological model was calibrated based on a combination of Virtual Climate Network stations and existing sub-daily precipitation information located within Lake Waahi surface water catchment. The hydrological models were calibrated at one continuous monitoring streamflow station in each of the surface water catchments discharging to the lakes. Due to the large potential impact of water consented activities above Awaroa at Sansons Br (within Lake Waahi surface water catchment), calibration for the Lake Waahi model was carried out taking into account only winter flows. Analysis of the calibration indicates that the models are able to better represent low flow conditions than high flow conditions when compared with streamflow observations. This result is expected due to the low density of observed precipitation gauges across the catchments and the area of the surface water catchments. Validation of the models over the whole period of record indicates that the hydrological models reproduce the range of hydrological characteristics observed at the gauging stations. Over the period 1973-2013 Lake Whangape inflows are estimated to average 5.81 cumecs (ranging from 3.80-8.8 cumecs) while Lake Waahi inflows are estimated to average 1.88 cumecs (ranging from 1.00-2.57 cumecs). Inter-comparison of the calibrated Topnet parameters used for both catchments indicates that most of the parameter multipliers are similar across both models. This indicates a consistency of the hydrological process representation across the large watershed. The TopNet hydrological model is routinely used for hydrological modelling applications in New Zealand. It is a spatially distributed, time-stepping model of water balance. It is driven by time series of precipitation and temperature data, and of additional weather elements where available. TopNet simulates water storage in the snowpack, plant canopy, rooting zone, shallow subsurface, lakes and rivers. It produces time series of modelled river flow (under natural conditions) throughout the modelled river network, as well as evaporation. TopNet has two major components, namely a basin module and a flow routing module. Climate information was obtained from Virtual Climate Station Network. Annual average precipitation and evaporation were estimated by NIWA. Spatial information in TopNet is provided by national datasets on catchment topography (i.e. 30m digital elevation model), physical (Land Cover Database, Land Resource Inventory, and hydrological properties (River Environment Classification). The method for deriving TopNet initial parameter estimates from GIS data sources in New Zealand is given in Table 1 of Calrk et al. (2008). [Clark, M.P.;Rupp,D.E.;Woods,R.A.;Zheng,X.;Ibbitt,R.P.;Slater,A.G.;Schmidt,J.;Uddstrom,M.J.(2008). Hydrological data assimilation with the ensemble Kalman filter: Use of streamflow observations to update states in a distributed hydrological model. Advances in Water Resources 31(10):1309-1324.]

The Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) engaged NIWA to prepare and process estuarine sediment samples collected from Porirua Harbour in late 2010 and manage the analyses of both organic and metal contaminants for comparison with ANZECC sediment quality guidelines. Metal contaminants were analysed by Hill Laboratories and reported elsewhere. NIWA provided analytical data for organochlorine pesticides (OCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and particle size distributions (0-300 μm). This report describes methodology and presents results [including quality assurance (QA) data] for the analyses of OCs, PAHs and particle size distributions for estuarine sediment samples collected from Porirua Harbour in 2010.

This core-funded research project aimed to map river reaches that gain and lose water to, and from, the groundwater system from two regions of New Zealand (Southland and Otago). A survey of river reaches that lose and gain flow in these regions of New Zealand was conducted at Environment Southland (ES), and Otago Regional Council (ORC) with key hydrologists, groundwater scientists and ecologists to record their knowledge of the locations of flow losing and gaining reaches on rivers and streams in their region. Following these interviews, the information was then transferred to a GIS layer to enable mapping of losing and gaining reaches in Southland and Otago. This work could serve as a platform for groundwater related research or engineering by NIWA in New Zealand.

To satisfy resource consent conditions for monitoring at 2 mussel farm sites in Pigeon Bay, Banks Peninsula, Pigeon Bay Aquaculture LTD commissioned NIWA to conduct a survey of the seabed beneath the 2 farm sites.Sampling for this project included a benthic grab, core samples and benthic dredge at sample sites established along 4 transects extending to the north, east, east(middle) and south of the farms. At each site, measurements and observations were performed to characterise key indicators of benthic effects including sediment grain size, sediment organic content, sediment smell and colour, depth of sediment, redox layer, infaunal community composition, epifaunal community composition, and shell drop. Results showed no evidence that the mussel farming activity had caused significant adverse impacts to the benthic habitat or communities beyond and beneath farm boundaries.