Full Title
Comprehensive Review of the 1980 - 2008 Murray River Monitoring Data
Contact Person
John Hawking
Project Team
John Hawking
Funding Body
Murray-Darling Basin Authority
Duration
July 2009 - December 2010
Outcomes
Report to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
Summary
Long term biological data sets are rare both within Australia and indeed world wide, with most ecological research limited to one to three years at best. This is an inadequate time frame to elucidate the underlying patterns and processes that occur in riverine systems and identify long term ecological change as opposed to natural short term fluctuations which occur in biological communities.
The 28 year data set generated by the Murray River Monitoring Program is of exceptional value. This period has incorporated cycles of wet and extreme dry years and provides an opportunity to assess how these altered climatic conditions, discharge and management of the Murray River have impacted on river health and biological communities.
The geographic extent of the Murray River Monitoring Program from Biggara in the headwaters to Woods Point in the Lower Murray will enable an examination of how the biological communities of different sections of the Murray River respond to these climatic and human induced changes. The combination of the temporal scale and geographic extent of this data set is therefore rare and potentially unique on a world scale and is of immense value to both river managers and the scientific community.
This review will identify and assess the long, medium and short term changes in river health, biodiversity, community structure and water quality of the Murray River and investigate links in macroinvertebrate communities to climatic, hydrological and water quality changes and flow management.
