Coasts: monitoring and reporting

Coastal monitoring in the Waikato

Our coasts are national treasures, but they are threatened by loss of natural character and biodiversity, and degraded water and sediment quality.

Waikato Regional Council regularly monitors and reports on our region's coastal resources and how they are changing.

We regularly monitor coastal resources at a number of sites throughout the region. Our coastal indicators summarise the results of our science and monitoring programmes, and provide a holistic report on the state of the Waikato region's environment.

Indicators

Coastal biology

This indicator describes the diversity of animals that live in our estuaries.

Pollutants in sediments

This indicator monitors levels of the following trace elements and organic compounds in some of our region's estuarine sediments.

Coastline ownership

This indicator measures the public and private ownership of the Waikato region’s coastline.

Extent of coastal habitats

This indicator is based on an estimate of the spatial extent and distribution of different intertidal vegetated habitats in selected estuaries within the Waikato region.

Protected coastal areas

This indicator monitors the area of Waikato Regional Council's marine environment which is legally protected or subject to management controls.

Coastal developments at risk

This indicator identifies the area currently at risk from coastal erosion associated with natural shoreline changes and current sea level.

Shoreline protection structures

This indicator identifies shoreline protection structures along the Waikato region’s beaches and coastline areas.

Shoreline change

This indicator measures shoreline change (erosion and accretion) at a subset of sandy beaches on the Coromandel Peninsula.