Waters of the western springs catchment, Auckland

Abstract

Aquifers occur in basalt deposits infilling valleys in the Western Springs catchment of Auckland City, and they discharge into small streams incised along the edges of major lava flows. Total run-off from the area is >0.261 m 3 ·s -1 . Analyses by standard methods of twelve subsurface and surface waters show that flowing groundwaters have a low level of pollution (dissolved oxygen x = 7.6 mg·l -1 , abuminoid nitrogen x = 0.038 mg·l -1 , and total solids x = 188 mg·l -1 ). Surface waters and stagnant groundwater have high, but varying levels of biological activity. Although much of the dissolved solid content of all the waters (e.g., Ca 2+, Mg 2+

Crenic habitats, hotspots for freshwater biodiversity conservation: toward an understanding of their ecology

“…The first studies describing the biological communities inhabiting New Zealand freshwater springs were of Western Springs, Auckland (Johnstone 1972); Avon River/Otakaro, Christchurch (Marshall 1973); and Waikoropupu Springs and five other coldwater springs elsewhere in New Zealand (Michaelis 1974(Michaelis , 1976a(Michaelis , b, 1977. At the end of the 1970s, Russell & Rodgers (1977) characterised the waters of Western Springs and Cowie & Winterbourn (1979) investigated the biota at the spring source of Middle Bush Stream, an alpine springbrook near Cass, central South Island. During the next 20 years, there were no studies characterising biological communities or spring habitats, although the origin of some springs of the east coast of the North Island was studied (Hunt & Glover 1995) and some ecological studies compared springbrook biota with invertebrate communities of unstable streams fed by run-off (e.g.…”

Carbon dioxide drawdown by Devonian lavas

“…The same high porosity and permeability of lava flow tops makes them favourable for artificial sequestration (McGrail et al 2006) and for geological sequestration, and also makes them good aquifers in many parts of the world (e.g. Russell & Rodgers 1977; Kulkarni et al 2000). The vesicles in which much of the Devonian calcite occurs are also critical to artificially-induced calcite precipitation, as they present very large surface areas (McGrail et al 2006).…”