Date: |
11 May 2023, 11.00AM – 12.00PM |
duration: |
1 hr |
Location: |
Online |
Cost: |
Free event |
Robin is a freshwater ecologist at the Cawthron Institute. He is involved in a range of projects with a focus on river and stream restoration, freshwater fisheries management and community approaches to river heath improvement. His research interests include land-use impacts on aquatic ecology and understanding native fish and salmonid life-histories and population dynamics. Recently, he has been involved in projects to enhance freshwater ecosystem values within agricultural landscapes, through actively restoring physical / structural stream habitat and promoting alternative land and stream management practices. He has a co-lead role in supporting the current MBIE-Endeavour Fish Futures programme: https://www.fishfutures.co.nz/.
Over the past 100 years New Zealand’s lowland waterbodies have been modified by streambed lowering, channel straightening and field drainage. Drainage has now occurred to the extent that over 90% of NZ’s wetlands have been lost. While wetland drainage has now largely ceased, lowland waterbodies are subjected to ongoing channel maintenance through mechanical macrophyte clearing, weed spraying and streambank reconstruction. These actions are undertaken to ensure the productivity of surrounding farmland and to protect homes and infrastructure from high water levels. Progressively, many lowland wetland-stream complexes have been replaced by grid-patterned drain networks. Yet, these modified waterbodies are still freshwater habitats that can harbour surprising high, and often overlooked, instream values.
This webinar will explore how drain maintenance practices alter stream habitat and affect instream life—with a focus on freshwater fish and discuss a 10-year fish and habitat monitoring programme in Waituna Creek (Southland), which captured a major stream bank reconstruction initiative and a restoration project that included installing two-stage channels and instream habitat structures. discuss an ambitious project in the Ararira-LII River (Canterbury plains), that aims to reimagine catchment drainage by consolidating and scaling-up various alternative ecosystem friendly drainage management methods to an entire lowland catchment.
The Rivers Group will be hosting the River Ecology series, boasting a variety of topics and presenters throughout the month of May. This programme is sponsored by Regional Councils River Managers Special Interest Group and Te Uru Kahika and Kanoa.
Robin is a freshwater ecologist at the Cawthron Institute. He is involved in a range of projects with a focus on river and stream restoration, freshwater fisheries management and community approaches to river heath improvement. His research interests include land-use impacts on aquatic ecology and understanding native fish and salmonid life-histories and population dynamics. Recently, he has been involved in projects to enhance freshwater ecosystem values within agricultural landscapes, through actively restoring physical / structural stream habitat and promoting alternative land and stream management practices. He has a co-lead role in supporting the current MBIE-Endeavour Fish Futures programme: https://www.fishfutures.co.nz/.
Over the past 100 years New Zealand’s lowland waterbodies have been modified by streambed lowering, channel straightening and field drainage. Drainage has now occurred to the extent that over 90% of NZ’s wetlands have been lost. While wetland drainage has now largely ceased, lowland waterbodies are subjected to ongoing channel maintenance through mechanical macrophyte clearing, weed spraying and streambank reconstruction. These actions are undertaken to ensure the productivity of surrounding farmland and to protect homes and infrastructure from high water levels. Progressively, many lowland wetland-stream complexes have been replaced by grid-patterned drain networks. Yet, these modified waterbodies are still freshwater habitats that can harbour surprising high, and often overlooked, instream values.
This webinar will explore how drain maintenance practices alter stream habitat and affect instream life—with a focus on freshwater fish and discuss a 10-year fish and habitat monitoring programme in Waituna Creek (Southland), which captured a major stream bank reconstruction initiative and a restoration project that included installing two-stage channels and instream habitat structures. discuss an ambitious project in the Ararira-LII River (Canterbury plains), that aims to reimagine catchment drainage by consolidating and scaling-up various alternative ecosystem friendly drainage management methods to an entire lowland catchment.
