The long road to Lake restoration: Lessons from the past, challenges for the future
18 August 2026 - 18 August 2026
5:30–6:30 pm
Region(s): Waikato
Type(s): presentations
Come along to this free lecture by Professor Deniz Özkundakci, (The University of Waikato Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato). It will look at how we know why many lakes became polluted and we know much more about how to restore them – but what does recovery look like in a changing climate?
For much of the last decades, freshwater science has focused on understanding why lakes became degraded. Nutrient pollution from agriculture, urban development, and other human activities has transformed many lakes, leading to algal blooms, declining water quality, and the loss of ecological and cultural values. This understanding has driven major advances in lake restoration, with scientists, communities, iwi, and environmental managers working together to improve the health of our lakes.
But restoring lakes is becoming increasingly challenging.
Climate change is altering the way lakes function, bringing warmer waters, changing rainfall patterns, more frequent extreme weather events, and increasing ecological uncertainty. Even when nutrient inputs are reduced, many lakes do not simply return to the condition they were once in. Instead, they are recovering under a new and changing set of environmental conditions.
In this lecture, Professor Deniz Özkundakci reflects on more than two decades of studying lakes, tracing the evolution of freshwater science from understanding the causes of degradation to tackling one of today's biggest challenges: defining what successful recovery looks like in a changing world. Drawing on research from New Zealand and overseas, he will explore how new technologies, ecological forecasting, and ecosystem modelling are helping scientists and communities make better decisions about the future of our freshwater ecosystems.
For more information and to register: www.waikato.ac.nz/news-events/events/find-event/hamilton-public-lecture-by-professor-deniz.
Related content
The Hub has extensive resources on freshwater, use these curations to explore further:
Lakes380 – Our lakes’ health: past, present, future – find out about the largest scientific study ever undertaken of lakes in Aotearoa.
Lakes380 – a context for learning – includes key concepts, curriculum links and additional pedagogical help.
Waitī – freshwater environments looks at our connections to freshwater and how we are impacted by the degraded state of many of our freshwater environments.
Smart Water – a context for learning is a suite of resources that foster a greater understanding and appreciation of water from source to tap.
Tuihonoa Te Reo o Te Repo – he kohinga rauemi pāhekoheko a Tuihonoa Te Reo o Te Repo hei āwhina i ngā kaiako ki te whakatītina i ngā ākonga kia tū hei kaitiaki mō ngā repo. E whai ana hoki kia tū tiketike mai te mātauranga Māori, mā roto i ngā mahi whakaora taiao.
Freshwater resources – planning pathways – help for teachers, based on the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ report on the pressures, state and impacts of human activities on the freshwater environment in Our freshwater 2023.
New Zealand’s freshwater fish – introduction – exploring our unique native fish, their habitats and suggestions on what we can do to help conserve this taonga (resources in te reo Māori and English).
For more resources, browse the wide range of content under our Freshwater or Water topics, remember you can use the filters.
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