The lakes and rivers of Aotearoa are a precious resource. They provide us with drinking water we swim and fish in them; farmers rely on them and they underpin our national identity as a clean, green place to live and visit.

It’s essential that we protect our freshwater resources and support healthy ecosystems. Continuous water quality monitoring using IoT is a vital tool in successful freshwater management.

Measuring and monitoring helps protect our waterways

New rules for freshwater came into effect in September 2020, which aim to protect and maintain healthy waterways. The Government wants to see measurable improvements to the water quality in our rivers and lakes within five years. An important part of the freshwater legislation is working with farmers to protect rivers and lakes from farm run-off. Contaminants like animal effluent, sediment and nutrients can upset the fragile balance of delicate waterways, endangering wildlife and reducing the quality of our drinking and swimming water.

Farmers and councils now need to take more action to stop contaminants from reaching waterways, and they’ll need to be able to demonstrate that their efforts are successful. Measuring and monitoring for contaminants means councils can keep an eye on water quality, landowners can demonstrate that their activities aren’t leading to degradation, and any sudden problems can quickly be identified and fixed.

There are several possible ways to measure water quality – helicopters are often used to scoop up samples from beaches, or manual samples can be taken at set intervals. Both options work, but one is expensive and the other is labour intensive. IoT is an ideal solution: once it’s set up the ongoing costs are very low and it can provide an incredible depth and breadth of data, delivered directly to a dashboard on any smartphone.

Find out more about smart water management with IoT

Continuous monitoring provides more detail and insights

Monitoring water quality with grab sampling is adequate, but when you want to make the best possible decisions, real-time continuous monitoring gives you much more detailed information. That’s why continuous IoT monitoring is the method of choice for Mercury Energy, which uses it to track water quality in the Waikato River (the catchment for its eight hydro dams). Adroit’s site-specific IoT devices are continuously tracking what’s happening in the water at several sites and feeding that information back via Spark’s Cat-M1 network.

“To make good management decisions, we all need access to the best information,” Gavin Williamson, Mercury’s Catchment Sustainability Manager explained in a recent webinar. “Real-time data is what will help us understand short term changes. Water quality can change weekly, or daily, and real-time monitoring gives you that richness of data. You can sit and watch changes in water quality on your phone.”

Listen to Gavin and others in our water quality monitoring webinar

The Waikato River is also being monitored by Living Water, a partnership between Fonterra and the Department of Conservation. There are 38 farms in the catchment area, and Living Water is using IoT to show how effective the farmers’ efforts have been in protecting the waterways.

The Adroit monitoring stations are providing real-time measurements of:

• Nitrates
• Sediment, including turbidity and total suspended solids
• Dissolved oxygen
• Temperature
• Connectivity
• pH

All this data paints a detailed picture of the water quality, minute by minute, across the catchment – giving Fonterra and DOC the information they need to make evidence-based decisions on water management.

Learn about Living Water Waikato’s IoT story

Effective even in remote rural areas

Water monitoring is often required in rural areas with poor connectivity, but because the Cat-M1 network is specifically designed for IoT applications, it can overcome some of these challenges. It only sends small parcels of information, but it can send them a long way. That means, although it wouldn’t be the right choice for streaming a movie, it’s exactly what you need to provide real-time water quality information from a device in a remote area. If the connection is lost briefly, a ‘data bucket’ stores 36 hours of data, so there’s a backstop while the device is reconnected.

Remote monitoring can even be mobile – which is how it’s being deployed in Lake Rotoiti, located in Nelson Lakes National Park. Mahi Maiori Professionals needed to measure water quality in the furthest parts of the lake, with the flexibility to measure in any spot as required. Adroit developed prototype ‘mauri0meter’ sensors, which aren’t permanently installed, but are instead mounted on a jet-ski. This means testing can take place at any point in Lake Rotoiti, with real-time data available to inform iwi water management decisions.

Read more about Adroit’s IoT water monitoring for iwi

Clean, healthy water for future generations

Water monitoring using IoT is a powerful way to measure our impact on waterways – and to improve our practices so we can keep our water clean. This will be a vital tool in making sure that future generations have access to healthy drinking water and clean swimming spots.

Learn more about Spark’s IoT water monitoring solutions here, or talk to one of our IoT team to find out how water monitoring could help you make smarter resource management decisions.

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