Environmental water managers have protected a portion of the flows following rainfall and flows into the Barwon-Darling during March and April 2021. The additional flows will help native fish to travel along the Barwon-Darling to improve opportunities for them to feed and breed. An update is available here.
ver the summer of 2020-21, around 23 GL of water for the environment was delivered across the Lower Gwydir, Gingham and Mallowa Creek systems within the Gwydir Valley and downstream.
In combination with natural flows, water for the environment helped improve the condition of the Gwydir Wetlands Ramsar sites located on ‘Old Dromana’ and ‘Goddard’s Lease’. They also provided habitat for a range of waterbirds, fish, frogs, and turtles after an extended dry period.
Floods that hit the Gwydir catchment in late March, 2021, brought a mixture of devastation and life to the communities and ecosystems that depend on the catchment’s rivers. As the entire Gwydir catchment was doused with heavy rainfall between March 22 and March 24, downpours quickly translated into a significant, widespread flooding event. We tracked this event, including its volume and extent, as it moved throughout the channels in the Gwydir system and beyond.
The Condamine catchment recieved good rainfall in early 2021 with some areas recieving up to 200 mm between January and March. Runoff from these rains contributed to natural inflows that complimented Commonwealth water for the environment. Stay current with these events and their outcomes via the CEWO Event updates below. Event update #1 –…
Delivering flows to maintain water quality in remnant pools is vital to maintain habitat quality and provide refuge for iconic species such as Murray Cod and Golden Perch. However, there are a number of inherent risks with delivering water through a dry system and we want to tell you all about them.
The year that was 2020 put a lot of things out of whack for the majority of us. While the fish, frogs and birds of the Warrego-Darling river systems were seemingly unaware, the Flow-MER team came across a few challenges in keeping a close eye on our study locations. Early 2020 saw the greatest flows…
The Gwydir River valley is home to a diverse range of aquatic species that rely on flows of fresh water to survive and thrive. The 2019 calendar year was the driest on record and the drought saw record low rainfall which led to sustained periods of no flow. Very dry conditions combined with high temperatures and local bushfires had to place a lot of pressure on the plants and animals of the Gwydir. In this little story we’ll provide some insight into how the system responded.
Dr Sarah Mika is a lover of water and the life that teems in its presence. From water quality to microinvertebrates to macroinvertebrates, Sarah is passionate about the small things that make wetlands boom. In this story Sarah tells of this passsion; how it started while studying and playing in the coastal rivers of NSW and how it’s fuelled now by researching various wetlands of the northern Murray-Darling Basin for the CEWO’s Flow-MER Project.
The last four years have been the driest on record across much of the northern Murray-Darling Basin, despite rain earlier in 2020, and the current La Nina. Parts of the Barwon River have not flowed for over 60 days, and the river is drying back to waterholes. So, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office (CEWO) have coordinated for freshes of water for the environment to be released down 200+ km’s of the upper Barwon system between December 2020 and January 2021.
The Commonwealth Environmental Water Office (CEWO) have released Edition #3 of Going with the Flow. Check it out for a summary of the latest basin-wide monitoring activities for the MER project.
A basin-scale highlights map is also available below for a brief on how our rivers and wetlands were tracking over winter/spring 2020.
