Degree of River Regulation for Tributary Junctions in the NSW Murray-Darling Basin

A spatial analysis identifies significant tributary junctions across the NSW Murray-Darling Basin where inflows from unregulated or less regulated tributaries join heavily regulated rivers. The dataset characterizes junctions by the relative change in the 'Degree of Regulation', calculated as the ratio of upstream reservoir storage capacity to mean annual runoff. It was published by the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water and last updated on 2026-05-12.

Use Cases

• Identifying potential tributary hotspots that may mitigate the serial discontinuity effect below dams based on the described water chemistry changes.
• Prioritizing tributaries for conservation based on their potential role in enhancing biogeochemical processes and ecosystem productivity below confluences.
• Analyzing spatial patterns of river regulation and its discontinuities across the NSW Murray-Darling Basin as described in the analysis.

Strengths

• Focuses on the NSW Murray-Darling Basin, a specific and significant geographical area.
• Calculates a defined 'Degree of Regulation' metric based on reservoir capacity and mean annual runoff.
• Licensed under CC-BY-4.0, allowing for broad reuse.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Collection Method

Spatial analysis of tributary junctions and calculation of Degree of Regulation.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-12 22:41:16.661156; freshness should be verified.

Geography

NSW Murray-Darling Basin