Skip to content

Wetlands

Fifteen naturally uncommon ecosystems are confined to wetlands. These are areas where the drainage effect results in a permanent to seasonally high water table, or to open water, and where plants and animals adapted to wet conditions are present.
Gumland with cemented pan visible at the surface, Lake Ohia, Northland (Susan Wiser)

Gumlands

Gumlands are shrub-covered, flat to rolling land in northern New Zealand, which have deposits of kauri gum. Most remaining ones are centr...

Dune slacks (Susan Wiser)

Dune slacks

These are small, nutrient-enriched, vegetated, moist depressions between shore dunes or in a sandbank, especially those which periodicall...

A tarn beneath Drunken Sailor, west Nelson (Peter Williams)

Tarns

Tarns are small mountain and high country lakes. They form mainly in association with glacial features such as cirque basins and kettleho...

String mires Mt. Titiroa Fiordland. (Peter Williams)

String mires

String mires are formed from distinctive string-pool and island patterning of mostly upland wetlands. They have slightly elevated ridges ...

Snow bank vegetation on Mt O’Shanessy, Westland (Rowan Buxton)

Snow banks

Snow bank communities occur in the alpine zone in situations where snow lies for up to seven months of the year. They are saturated well ...

A flush in Burgoo Stream, West Nelson, with [Gentianella grisebachii] (Peter Williams)

Seepages and flushes

Seepages and flushes form where groundwater emerges on hillsides to form soils that are mostly permanently saturated with relatively nutr...

Pakihi, Westland (Rowan Buxton)

Pakihi

Pakihi are a type of wet heath, characterised by very infertile soils with an impervious horizon and little or no peat. In South Westland...

Lake margins at Kaihoka Lakes, Westland (Janet Wilmshurst)

Lake margins

Lakes have been arbitrarily defined as bodies of fresh water having a major dimension of 0.5 km or more (Irwin 1975), but many smaller bo...

Okarito Lagoon, Westland (Janet Wilmshurst)

Lagoons

In the broadest sense, a lagoon is a shallow lake that is intermittently connected with a river, a deeper lake, or the sea. In New Zealan...

Awarua Estuary, Southland (Rowan Buxton)

Estuaries

Estuaries are where fresh water from rivers mixes with salt water. They are formed where the underlying or adjacent topography constrains...

An ephemeral wetland in Burgoo Stream, western Nelson (PeterWilliams)

Ephemeral wetlands

Ephemeral wetlands are formed in closed depressions lacking a surface outlet and are wet only seasonally or in wet years. The water sourc...

Damp sand plains, Westland (Peter Johnson)

Damp sand plains

Damp sand plains are flat areas where wind has removed sand down to a level where the water is permanently just below the surface or occa...

[Phyllachne colensoi] in cushion bog at Arthur´s Pass (Peter Williams)

Cushion bogs

Cushion bogs primarily occur in mountainous, typically alpine, situations. Wetlands with cushion-forming angiosperms appear unique to the...

[Sporadanthus traversii] domed bog at Wharekauri, Chatham Island (Bev Clarkson)

Domed bogs

Domed bogs ([Sporadanthus]) are raised bogs dominated by [Sporadanthus ferrugineus] or [S. traversii], members of the family Restionaceae...

Blanket bog cushions of Donatia novae–zelandiae at Awarua Bog, Southland (Bev Clarkson)

Blanket mires

Blanket mires are peatlands (i.e. bogs and fens) that extensively cover the crests, slopes, flats, and hollows of an undulating landform,...