Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington Harbour is a nationally significant harbour and port environment valued for the range of ecosystem goods and services it provides. Like other coastal environments surrounded by urban areas, the harbour receives inputs of sediment, nutrients and other contaminants from the surrounding catchments. Such contaminants have the potential to adversely impact on the health and function of its ecosystem.
Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) have been collaborating on the monitoring of Te Whanganui–a-Tara since 2016. This project fulfils GWRC’s requirements for monitoring water quality from within Te Whanganui–a-Tara to assess changes or impacts from the surrounding catchments. The use of real time telemetered water quality buoys coupled with discrete water quality sampling aims to build a baseline picture of water quality in Te Whanganui–a-Tara.
The methods & results page summarises data collected by the Wellington Regional Integrated Buoy Observations instrument (WRIBO), and Hutt River flow, turbidity and rainfall gauges from July 2017 to October 2021. Locations of these are shown on the map below and previous data summaries are available on request.
This web report may be cited as: GWRC 2021. Te Whanganui–a-Tara monitoring data report 2017/21. Greater Wellington Region Council.
A PDF print-version of this report can be viewed and downloaded here.