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Current ecological state of wadeable streams in the Waikato region 2018-2020

TR 2022/32

Report: TR 2022/32

Authors: M Pingram, B David, N Squires, J Smith and M Hamer

Abstract

This report presents the results from the Waikato Regional Council’s Regional Ecological Monitoring of Wadeable Streams (REMS) programme, focusing on the state of indices as they appear in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management (NPS-FM, 2020).

WRC’s REMS probabilistic network incorporates a random design of up to 180 sites on developed land sampled on a 3 yearly rotation which allows statistically robust estimates of stream condition to be generated at both regional and Freshwater Management Unit (FMU) scales.

Core ecological components of aquatic invertebrates, fish, instream habitat, shade, periphyton, and aquatic plants are presented. A ‘change analysis’ to explore the temporal change in region-wide condition was also applied (up to 2020).