Grovetown Lagoon An Oxbow Lake With Abundant Bird Life
GEOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
Grovetown lagoon is one of the few natural wetlands remaining on the Wairau plains in Marlborough. Geographically speaking the lagoon is an ‘oxbow lake’. This type of lake is formed over time when a river creates a curving, meandering path which eventually nearly cuts back onto itself. (See aerial image). As the ‘neck’ of the meander becomes narrower and narrower it becomes susceptible to breaching during the next major flood, which in this case occurred in 1861. The high waters and fast flows broke through the narrow piece of land which in effect straightened the river’s path leaving an isolated curved lake where the river once flowed.
THE LAGOON
As the Wairau river continued on its new, straighter
