Lakes Appreciation Month – What do we value about our lakes?
July is Lakes Appreciation Month and to celebrate this we’ve canvassed some of the Lakes380 team to find out about what they value about lakes and to share stories of their taonga lake. Even though it’s now the end of July, that doesn’t mean that we can’t continue appreciating our lakes for the rest of […]
Inspiring our next generation of lake scientists
By Jonathan Puddick (JP) and Georgia Thomson-Laing During 2022, the Lakes380 team will be out sharing their passion for lake science and lake ecology with schools in the Nelson region. Because lake restoration is a multi-generational journey, we believe that our best hope for protecting the health of our precious lakes is to get our […]
Lakes380 gives back in support of the Predator Free 2050 Vision
Jonathan Puddick, Cawthron At our recent team building retreat, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to organise an activity to help the Lakes380 team hone their teamwork skills. I decided that I’d like to share with the team one of my passions outside of lake ecology and get them involved the predator control […]
Deep lakes and fancy coffee uncovered
McKayla Holloway, Cawthron Institute The cold morning mountain air filled my lungs as the sun broke over the mountain tops. I tucked myself into a corner of the boat as Jamie and Sean busied themselves opening and closing mysterious black boxes fill of technical equipment. My mind wandered to the terrain that encompassed us. Lake […]
Where The Wild Weka Are: A Chatham Island Lake Adventure
Georgia Thomson-Laing (Cawthron) Standing on the headlands of Cape Young, keeping an eye out for sharks in the clear blue of the ocean waves as they crashed on a white sandy beach at the northern end of Chatham Island with a vista of the rest of the island stretching out beyond, this was not the […]
Nelson public get up close with Lakes380 research
Jonathan Puddick, Cawthron Institute One hundred years after the Cawthron Institute was officially opened, New Zealand’s largest independent research organisation opened its doors again. This time it was to Nelson’s public, to give them a taste of the exciting research happening at Cawthron in the present day and to get an insight into its rich […]
Out of sight, out of mind? Examining public access to lakes in Aotearoa
– Shana Dooley, Cawthron Institute Summer Scholar This summer I joined the Cawthron Institute and Lakes380 team to explore public access to New Zealand’s lakes using GIS (Geographic Information System) analysis. For the analysis, I created a new lakes dataset, based on an existing dataset from Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) and additional data from […]
Alpine lake sampling – Queenstown, part 2
– Laura MacDonald, Honours student, University of Otago As a part of my honours project (supervised by Associate Professor Chris Moy, University of Otago) I was lucky enough to join on to the last three days of the Lakes380 trip to Queenstown where we visited and sampled six lakes. On the first day we drove […]
Rotorua and South Taranaki – back for more core!
Alex Matheson, Victoria University of Wellington student The problem: Some of the lakes cored for Lakes380 don’t provide the targeted 1000 years of lake history, due to, among other reasons, a high sedimentation rate. Our mission: Collect longer, 6 meter sediment cores from several Rotorua and South Taranaki lakes, using the powerful Mackareth corer, to […]
Tūhono ki Wairarapa Moana
Lakes380 Wairarapa Field Trip January 2021 By Katie Brasell, PhD Candidate at Cawthron/UoA This short but fruitful field trip was a week full of contrasts, both culturally and meteorologically, as you will see from the photos throughout this blog. I believe we can reduce the negativity often associated with contrasting thoughts, ideas, images and experiences […]
Weathering the Storm – Lakes380 Team Present Lake Research at NZ Freshwater Science Conference
The Lakes380 team was well represented at the joint conference between the New Zealand Freshwater Sciences Society, the New Zealand Hydrological Society and the Rivers Group / Manatiaki Kōawa in Invercargill from 1-4 December. The theme for the conference was ‘Weathering the Storm’ which was very appropriate after a year of lock-downs and disruptions. We have weathered the COVID […]
North Canterbury – the last Lakes380 fieldwork for 2020
Blog by Lizette Reyes, Lab and Field Technician (GNS Science) I have been to a few Lakes380 fieldwork since 2018 and being part of the awesome and hardworking field team in North Canterbury is one of the highlights of my year. This tri pwas memorable for me because this was my first time to explore […]
Cows, kids and limoncello – Waikato Week 2
Konstanze Steiner – Research Scientist, Cawthron This was my second time coming along to join the Lakes380 field team. While I have heard many stories of clear water lakes surrounded by mountains, it did not matter to me what our destination was. Any opportunity to work at the source of what we research (the environment), […]
Waikato Lakes – week one
Laura Kelly, Scientist, Cawthron Institute Following some work helping process samples from previous field campaigns in Canterbury I was very excited to be joining my first Lakes 380 field sampling trip in the Waikato Region. It promised to be a busy week, with the last-minute additions of some lakes meaning three lake days were planned […]
Hawkes Bay Lakes – Round Two
Blog by Georgia Thomson-Laing (Cawthron Institute) Coming out of winter and into spring, I was more than looking forward to getting out into the field for my fifth Lakes380 sampling campaign, this time up in the Hawke’s Bay Region. After a quick flight with Susie and Maïlys from Nelson to Wellington, we met up with […]
