About NZwatercitizens
NZwatercitizens is a landing page for anyone in New Zealand interested in volunteer stream monitoring.
What does the site provide?
- A database for storing, understanding, presenting your data, and for viewing data from other sites
- Resources to help you learn methods for stream monitoring
- A link for ordering NIWA’s Stream Health Monitoring and Assessment Kit
- A forum for giving feedback, asking questions and sharing stories
Who might want to use this site?
- A farmer wanting to know how your farm management is affecting the life or water quality of your streams
- A community group wanting to store monitoring data from your local stream and compare it to other streams
- A school student wanting data for a project on stream health in your area
- A regional council scientist wanting to add volunteer data to council data for Sate of Environment reporting
- An iwi group wanting to access monitoring tools as part of a cultural monitoring programme
Do I have to use SHMAK to enter data on this site?
The data entry pages are designed to work well with SHMAK, but you can collect your data using another toolkit or other standard methods.
Who is behind it?
NZWatercitizens is supported by the National Advisory Group on Freshwater Citizen Science. This group is a collaboration between central government, regional and city councils, farming industry bodies, NGOs, universities and NIWA.
The core purpose of the National Advisory Group is to foster well-resourced and coordinated freshwater “citizen science” monitoring programmes in NZ. This website helps to fulfil some key aspects of their vision:
- People have access to tools and data that are user-friendly, accurate and make knowledge-sharing easy.
- They have access to training and support to grow in their knowledge and collect reliable data
- Their programmes inform decision making by individuals, communities and water managers.
- They stay involved in monitoring because they enjoy connecting with other people