Overview

Greater Wellington (GW) operates a hydrometric network for measuring rainfall, river levels and flow, lake and wetland levels, groundwater levels, tidal levels and soil moisture. There are approximately 270 monitoring stations on the hydrometric network, of which the majority are automated to operate continuously and to send the data to the office via a radio or cell phone telemetry system.

This report contains key results for each of the five main whaitua (main river) catchments with recorded data for the year summarised and compared to long term averages and any significant hydrological events that occurred.


Monitoring objectives

  • Provide information on the state of the Region’s water resources and the baseline quantity of water.
  • Detect long and short-term trends in climate and water resources.
  • Provide data on the state of the Region’s freshwater resources to enable informed decisions on sustainable allocation and use.
  • Inform whaitua committees to enable the creation of a unique vision and to prioritise objectives for land and water management.
  • Provide a flood warning monitoring network and alerting system for the Region.
  • Monitor drought conditions and enable drought warnings.
  • Inform policy and Regional Plan development and review.
  • Contribute to resource consent compliance monitoring.

Monitoring results

Summary results are presented in the following pages for a representative subset of the sites shown on the monitoring network map below. Use the top menu bar “Results” dropdown list or links below to navigate to each.


Monitoring network

Usage guide: Drag, scroll, and use the top right +/- buttons on the map to move and zoom to areas of interest. Hover over circles to see more information for each site. Toggle between layers in the top right “Monitoring network” box to see sites where data is collected (“In network”) and reported on (“In this report”) for each different monitoring aspect.

Note: circles marked with a star ( ) when ‘Groundwater levels’ is selected indicate there are two bores in the same location at different depths.


This web report may be cited as: GW 2023. Hydrology monitoring 2022/23. Greater Wellington.

A static PDF version of this report can be viewed and downloaded here.