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    Application of environmental weighting system for quantification of minimum flow in Whanganui River : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a degree in Master of Philosophy in Resource and Environmental Planning, Planning Department, Massey University
    (Massey University, 1994) Guinto, Rufino C
    Environmental weighting system is a technique for measuring the environmental sensitivity of reduced river flows. A points system with seven environmental categories was used to arrive at scores indicative of a location's sensitivity and commensurate with the maximum permissible volume of abstraction. The same score is used to estimate the environmentally prescribed flow or minimum flow. This study deals with the applicability of an environmental weighting system to the quantification of a prescribed minimum flow using the Whanganui River as a case study. The minimum flows in Whanganui River have been subject to considerable debate since the construction of a series of intakes on several headwater streams in the early seventies for the purpose of increasing water volumes for the ECNZ power generation at Tokaanu and nine hydroelectric power plant stations on the Waikato River. In 1977, the NZ Canoeing Association requested that a minimum flow be fixed which in 1983, culminated in a recommendation of 22 m-3 s-1 minimum flow at Te Maire in December and January. A review of these flows was carried out in 1987 and the minimum flow was increased to 29 m-3 -1 from December to May following a Planning Tribunal Hearing in 1989-90. The results showed that one of the flow allocation methods was very restrictive to ECNZ operations while strongly favouring the requirements of fisheries and other instream uses. Two other options were examined under the demand conditions in the Whanganui River. They provided for an environmentally prescribed flow which was similar to that proposed by the Planning Tribunal Determination (1990), but each had slightly different abstraction proposals to meet suggested flows. Under New Zealand conditions the technique was found to be useful in identifying the environmental constraints of competing demands for river water. However, in an already regulated flow regime the outcomes were hypothetical but still meaningful.
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    A development and application of GIS in Whanganui Catchment based river environment classification system : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Resource and Environmental Planning, Massey University
    (Massey University, 2002) Zhai, Qian
    This thesis concerns a development and implementation of Geographical Information System (GIS) for the New Zealand Whanganui catchment, based on a new methodology for river environment classification systems in New Zealand. The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) are developing this system with assistance from regional councils. The river habitat classification is sometimes called river "ecotyping". It describes the process of dividing rivers into similar or different physical classes based on the habitat requirements of the plants and animals that live there (Murray McLea, 1999). This project focuses on generating a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) for the Whanganui river catchment to determine Whanganui catchment boundaries and a series of hydrology parameters such as catchment patterns and channel slopes, etc. It comprises layers of elevation, rainfall, geology, land-cover and additional ecotyping related attributes for classification of each arc of the Whanganui River. There are five sections in this thesis. The first section introduces the basic concept of hydrology in environmental and ecological aspects. It reviews the hydrology model with GIS and DTM. It also briefly describes the river environment classification system – ecotyping methodology. Finally, it describes the aims and achievements of this project. The second section focuses on the ARC/INFO software environment, using different ways to generate the DTMs and present criteria that will be used to test and analyse the accuracy of DTMs. Also the Whanganui catchment and catchment boundaries will be determined. The third section focuses on the river analysis. The main target is to test whether the 1: 50000 topographic data can be used to determine the channel slope and channel sinuosity for river sections other than reaches (Snelder et al. 1999). The fourth section describes the method of using ecotyping parameters and classification rules to classify each arc of the river into a database. These rules are introduced in the article "Further development and application of a GIS based river environment classification system" (Snelder et al. 1999). The last section as a conclusion of the thesis will summary the achievements, the methodology of the processing and the results of the application of this research.