Aqua Intel Aotearoa
How can we balance the need to protect New Zealand’s water resources with the desire to grow our regional economies? By working to learn as much as we can about water availability, above and below ground.
That’s the goal of Aqua Intel Aotearoa: insights and actions for sustainable water use.
Aqua Intel Aotearoa is a partnership between Kānoa (the delivery arm of the Provincial Growth Fund) and GNS Science. It is a national science platform on regional water availability and storage.
The project identifies areas where there is both water available and good-quality land that could be brought into higher-value production – in particular, to benefit Maori landowners.
Te Mana o te Wai – the concept of protecting the health and wellbeing of freshwater – will be an important part of the ethos for each project.
Where we are working
Aqua Intel Aotearoa is currently funded to work with four regions: Northland, Gisborne, Otago, and Southland. Engagement is underway with councils, iwi and other stakeholders for the proposed investigations. Other regions may be added to the programme later on.
Improve our understanding of the Te Hiku aquifer, better measure the potential for harvesting high (winter) flows, and groundwater test drilling in Pouto.
GISBORNE
TAIRĀWHITI
Undertake groundwater drilling to improve our understanding of the aquifer, and assess surface water flows.
OBJECTIVES
Strengthen regional economies by shifting to higher value sustainable land uses.
Address disparities in Māori access to water for land development.
Support micro to medium-scale water storage projects that strengthen regional partnerships and provide wider public benefits
Support land use that does not increase - and ideally reverses - negative impacts on water quality, and maintains and improves the health of waterways.
In meeting these objectives, we will also consider how investment can:
contribute to a just transition to a low emissions economy and/or contribute to building community resilience to climate change
provide an incentive to change land use that risks degrading the environment to high value more sustainable uses.
SCIENTIFIC APPROACH
We have used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping to get initial indications of the most productive water sources for each region.
Using that information, we plan to do more in-depth assessments of specific water sources in each region, where this is of value to the region’s communities. These include aquifer mapping, surface water monitoring and test drilling.
We are talking to councils, iwi, and other stakeholders about whether the areas we want to assess focus on the right water sources for each region. If the use of some water sources is not acceptable to the regions, we want to know now so we can focus our future work on water sources they want to develop.
A FEW DEFINITIONS
Aquifer: the rocks and sediment that form a natural storage place for groundwater to move through.
Groundwater: water underneath the ground, which moves through different types of rocks and sediment.
Groundwater recharge: the process of water moving through the land and soil/rocks into the aquifer (to become groundwater).
Surface water: any body of water above ground (e.g. lake, river, stream).
NEWS
Media release 5 October 2021
Media Release 10 February 2022
Media Release 4 April 2022
Get in touch with Aqua Intel Aotearoa to learn more about our projects or ask a question.
