Ashley River at Gorge Bridge
The Ashley Gorge is situated a short distance from Christchurch, in the hills in the Oxford district.
*Scientific Data Update: Due to an error in data being displayed for this site, scientific data has been temporarily removed. For urgent information please contact Environment Canterbury's Customer Service.
This site is monitored for both water quality and ecosystem health and is located within a popular picnic and camping area at the base of the Mount Thomas forest. There are toilet facilities and a playground in the picnic area. Deep swimming holes along the river attract swimmers.
Recreational water quality at this site is influenced by flow related spikes in E. coli. Swimming at the site is not recommended up to 48 hours after rainfall.
This dashboard shows the result of macroinvertebrate sampling at this site. It displays three measures, macroinvertebrate community index, taxanomic richness and percent EPT.
If 'N/A' is showing, there are not enough data to calculate a 5-year median. You can select the 'Show more information+' box under each measure to see the available historic data.
The Cawthron Institute has worked alongside regional councils to verify the processes and methods used for macroinvertebrate data collection, processing of the data in the laboratory, quality control in the field and laboratory and the statistical analysis and interpretation of the results presented.
For more details on each tick, see our 'Can I Trust this Data' Factsheet.
Macroinvertebrates are sampled at this site as part of council's stream health monitoring programme, as recommended by proposed national guidelines.
Macroinvertebrate sampling is done annually or more frequently at this site as recommended by proposed national guidelines. Therefore, data shown here follow current best practice guidelines.
This site is a hard-bottomed site and appropriate sampling protocols have been applied. Data shown here have been collected using current best-practice.
Macroinvertebrate sampling is done in all meso-habitats (i.e., pool, run and riffle), rather than just in riffle habitat, as current guidelines suggest. All-habitat sampling provides a more comprehensive description than riffle-only sampling of the invertebrate community at a stream site. However, comparisons made between macroinvertebrate data collected in all habitat and data collected in just riffle habitat need to be treated with caution.
This council does not collect any macroinvertebrate samples for up to two weeks after a flood greater than three times the median flow as recommended by proposed national guidelines. Therefore, data collected at this site is following best practice.
Samples at this site have been processed following protocol P2 which is recommended by proposed national guidelines. However, the individual count number has been reduced from 200 to 100 (with a scan for rare taxa). Data processed at this site are therefore not following best practice and conclusions based on this data need to be treated with caution.
Data collected at this site had some form of field quality control done.
Data processed at this site has had one of the three Laboratory Quality Control Protocols (i.e., QC1, QC2,Q C3) applied. Data shown here is more robust than data with no laboratory QC applied.
