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New Zealand coastal water quality assessment

The Ministry for the Environment commissioned the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research  to review what data is available for state of the environment reporting on coastal and estuarine waters.

This report provides monitoring recommendations, and identifies a set of core variables and a set of additional variables for coastal water quality monitoring. It makes recommendations on site selection, sampling methods and reporting.
It highlights data gaps that need to be addressed to achieve a nationally representative picture of water quality in estuaries and coastal areas. It also presents current state and trends for physico-chemical (eg, pH), optical (eg clarity), nutrients (eg, nitrates) and microbiological parameters (eg, enterococci).

The data underpinning the report is available on the MfE data service.

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