The Waterways Centre for Freshwater Management’s annual Postgraduate Student Conference on 19 November drew 160 people, its highest attendance ever.
There was also an unprecedented number of eight oral presentations from Lincoln University scholars.
The Centre is a partnership between the University of Canterbury and Lincoln University and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.
Students from both universities, and a wide array of disciplines, presented diverse topics such as saltwater intrusion into shallow Christchurch aquifers, assessing the impacts of climate change on a lake in Cambodia, and soil hydrology and water quality in Southland eco industrial parks.
Lughano Mwenibabu, a Lincoln MFAT scholar from Malawi won the “Best Poster” prize for his poster on sediment trace metals as indicators of rural land use change in lake cores.
For the first time in the history of the event three people tied for second place in the oral presentations.
Organiser Katie Nimmo said the quality of presentations (both oral and posters) improved with every year and new categories of prizes could be required to acknowledge the hard work students put into their presentations.
She said the record attendance number, with people coming from around New Zealand, reinforced that interest from the wider community in multi-disciplinary research into freshwater management issues continues to be strong, and that the conference is an “excellent product which meets this demand”.
More than 50 academics across both universities with interest or expertise in freshwater form the Waterways membership, with their postgraduate students having access to Waterways scholarships and support, and presenting at the conference.
Many Waterways domestic graduates are working for local council, government, research institutes and consultancies. At the same time, Waterways members, staff and students work to communicate water resource information to the broader community.