Te oranga o te taiao State of the Environment 2022

This report summarises water quality data from the Waikato region’s West Coast. It reports on data from sites currently monitored and historic monitoring sites by Waikato Regional Council including Port Waikato, Whāingaroa (Raglan) Harbour, Aotea Harbour and Kawhia Harbour.

This report presents data collected over 17 years (from 2001 to 2018), summarises the state of, and trends in, estuarine health and provides recommendations for future monitoring.

This report documents the application and adaptation of the habitat mapping methodology for thirteen estuaries and harbours within the Waikato region.

Sediment levels in Whāingaroa (Raglan) Harbour and the Firth of Thames have been recorded since either 2002 or 2003 as part of the Regional Estuary Monitoring Programme (REMP). This report presents an updated calculation of SAR using the full quality-controlled sediment-level dataset up to November 2021.

The Hauraki Gulf Forum produces a triennial assessment of the state of the Hauraki Gulf and the responsiveness of agencies to strategic issues.

This report provides an overview of the state and trends in the nature, extent, and condition of the regional geothermal resource.

This report describes the current state (as at 2018) and trends (change over time) in land cover for the Waikato region between 1996 and 2018.

This report provides the first comprehensive spatial analysis of pastoral land cover change and intensity for the Waikato region. Conversion of planted forest to pastoral land, and changes in the intensity of pastoral land use in the Waikato region between 2001 to 2018 is presented.

This report presents data and trends in the seven indicators representing soil quality for the period 1995-2018 and discusses the main soil quality issues facing the Waikato region.

This report presents data and discusses results from a survey of soil stability and disturbance undertaken in 2021 using aerial imagery acquired during the summers of 2016/2017, 2017/2018, and 2018/2019.

The purpose of this technical report was to review local and international literature and identify land and drainage management options, and inform future research directions, for improving management practices to reduce peat subsidence and CO2 emissions from drained peatlands in the Waikato.

This report documents the extent of legally protected indigenous habitat on land in the Waikato region. It is based on 2018 land cover and 2022 legal protection overlays.

The land fragmentation methodology in this Ministry for the Environment report is designed to evaluate for all land types (Land Use Capability classes 1 to 7). The report summarises technical methods that underpin analysis, and the baseline method for updating future timesteps to meet future report requirements.

This report profiles the Waikato region’s economy – its current state and the trajectory it is on. In doing so, it canvases available information on the economic system – its productive processes and the stocks and flows of the inputs and outputs related to those processes.

This report assesses the state of river water quality in the Waikato region on 7 September 2017. The river state is based on Waikato Regional Council’s river monitoring sites with at least five years of data within a period that ends no earlier than 7 September 2017.

River water quality has been routinely monitored in the Waikato region since 1980. Monitoring at several Waikato River sites began then, with other sites being added later. This report is an analysis of trends in water quality in Waikato Regional Council’s river monitoring programmes, covering the 30-year period 1991 to 2020.

Waikato Regional Council commissioned NIWA to undertake this desktop assessment of historical data, in order to better understand the causes of the apparent deteriorating trend in microbial water quality across the region.

This report uses water quality and flow data from the routine monitoring of the Waikato and Waipā rivers and the consented discharges to determine the loads of the plant nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus in the rivers and discharges, and thereby establish the relative importance of the different sources of these nutrients

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).

This report describes the current and past state of water quality, and its inherent trends, within the Waikato Regional Council state of the environment (SOE) lakes monitoring network.

Waikato Regional Council has routinely monitored the water quality of the lake at a deep-water site since 1994 (with the field and laboratory work being undertaken by NIWA). The water quality of 14 rivers and streams flowing into the lake is also routinely monitored, and groundwater quality is routinely monitored in a network of 34 wells in the Taupō catchment.

This report describes the state of groundwater quality in the Waikato for the five years to the end of 2020 and trends over an 18-year period from 2003 to 2020.

This report presents an analysis of hydrological data in the Waikato region. The hydrological variables evaluated in this report include rainfall, evapotranspiration, groundwater levels, streamflow and water use.

Waikato Regional Council conducted four region wide surveys to establish, and track changes in the state of fencing, vegetation, buffer width, waterway crossings and stream-bank erosion at sites on pastoral land across the Waikato region. This report presents findings from the most recent survey (conducted during the summer/autumn period of 2017/2018) in conjunction with changes in measured attributes over previous monitoring periods.

This technical report documents the extent of freshwater wetlands in the Waikato region based on 2018 land cover.

Waikato Regional Council monitors changes in the amount and proportions of freshwater wetland that is in some form of legal protection, including government reserves and private protected land. This document reports on what wetland types are the best protected, who is protecting them, and where they are protected.