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Regional Estuary Monitoring Programme 10 year trend report: April 2001 to April 2011

TR 2014/41
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Report: TR 2014/41

Author: H Needham, N Singleton, H Gilkes and H Jones

About this report

Waikato Regional Council’s Regional Estuary Monitoring Programme (REMP) was initiated in April 2001 to determine the current status and monitor the temporal changes in the state of selected estuaries in the region. Information on the monitoring programme is available on this website.

Until recently the monitoring programme analysed sediments and sediment-dwelling organisms in two estuaries: the Firth of Thames, and Raglan (Whaingaroa) Harbour. In 2013 Tairua Harbour was added as a third estuary to the programme.

This report presents the first 10 years of monitoring data (April 2001 to April 2011). It provides analyses of trends over this period of time and investigates pattern and features in results that indicate the ecological health of the monitored estuaries.

Read or download the report

Regional Estuary Monitoring Programme 10 year trend report: April 2001 to April 2011 [PDF, 3.4 MB]

Contents
  Executive summary
1 Introduction
2 Methods
2.1 General programme design
2.1.1 Monitoring locations and sampling protocol
2.2 Sample collection and processing
2.2.1 Sediment-dwelling organisms
2.2.2 Sediment sampling
2.3 Data analysis
2.3.1 Overview of data analysis techniques
2.3.2 Abundance and dominance of sediment-dwelling organisms
2.3.3 Trend analysis
2.3.4 Changes in community composition over time
2.3.5 Relationships between community composition and sediment characteristics
3 Results
3.1 Abundance and dominance of sediment-dwelling organisms
3.2 Trends in indicator taxa
3.3 Trends in bivalve size classes
3.4 Trends in sediment characteristics
3.5 Changes in community composition over time
3.6 Relationships between community composition and sediment characteristics
4 Discussion
4.1 REMP: April 2001 to April 2011
4.2 Future perspectives and initiatives
4.2.1 Development of new REMP sites
4.2.2 Trait based indices
4.2.3 Summary of recommendations for future monitoring
5 Conclusions
  References
  Appendix 1: Indicator taxa
  Appendix 2: Statistics