Results of ecosystem health monitoring in

In the summer of 1999-2000 Environment Canterbury implemented a monitoring programme designed to monitor the health of aquatic ecosystems of wadeable rivers and streams throughout the Canterbury Region (Meredith et al., 2003). The stream ecosystem health monitoring programme is based around the rapid bioassessment protocols revised in the United States by Barbour et al. (1998). The objective is to assess the current state of health or integrity of rivers by assessing both the biotic and physical conditions of streams and rivers. Sites were selected on the basis of catchment landuse, source of flow, vegetation type and geographical spread, then divided into five ecosystem types based on the dominant source of flow i.e. mountain (M), foothill (F), inter-montane basin (IBS), Banks Peninsula (BP) and lowland (L). Within each of these five ecosystem types reference sites were selected, against which each site was compared. Habitat and biotic information was collected on two sampling occasions in summer (November-December and January-February). This enabled comparisons to be made between the early summer condition and later in the summer when streams were most stressed by environmental extremes of low flows and high temperatures. This information was intended to provide baseline data for future trend analysis