Freshwater is important to farms and the wider community. The freshwater chapter and supporting resources will help you to assess, manage and monitor the freshwater resources on your farm.
Please contact B+LNZ's resources team at [email protected] to request printed copies of resources.
Freshwater chapter
The chapter resource will guide you through a series of steps to complete this portion of your farm plan. It includes background information on the key concepts along with examples of how to complete any templates.
Freshwater templates
In this section, you’ll find blank templates that you can print or download to fill in electronically. These templates are compatible with Adobe Acrobat Reader – just download and save a copy to edit offline.
Supporting resource links
- Stream Health Check – the Stream Health Check involves a visual assessment of the stream and its immediate surroundings. View the Steam Health Check video series here.
- Rapid Habitat Assessment – this assessment helps give a quick indication of stream health.
- Landcare Trust Wetland Assessment – the New Zealand Landcare Trust have developed a practical tool to assess wetlands which may be useful if you have wetlands on your farm.
- Stream Health Monitoring Assessment Kit (SHMAK) – a range of tools and resources developed by NIWA to monitor a range of indicators.
- Environmental DNA (eDNA) – a test to determine the species and organisms present in a waterway or catchment from a water sample.
- NIWA's freshwater fish identification webpage – visit NIWA's page on freshwater fish for help identifying the different species.
- Catchment Group information – you can find information about catchment groups and getting involved here.
- Land and Water Aotearoa – the Land and Water Aotearoa site provides summaries of water quality testing results and trends from regional council and unitary authority monitoring.
- Managing stock near water – this page includes information on how to best manage stock near water along with information on stock exclusion and the economics of hill country stock water reticulation. You can also find the contaminant loss to water fact sheet series covering: nitrogen, sediment, phosphorus and e.coli here.
- Stock water management module – find the B+LNZ stock water management online learning module here.
- Farm Environment Plan Action Tool – an interactive tool developed by the Our Land and Water national science challenge that helps you to identify actions for each of the key issues and which may be the most effective or have additional co-benefits.
- LandscapeDNA – an interactive, online, mapping tool which provides physiographic landscape information that shows how water flows interact with the landscape providing useful information about nutrient and contaminant risks.