Corridors of River Recovery for NSW Hunter Catchments

A geospatial database for all freshwater stream length in the NSW Hunter catchments shows the spatial distribution of thirteen connections based on combinations of conservation, strategic, and high recovery potential targets. It was created by Macquarie University researchers using the NSW River Styles database accessed in January 2021 and published in 2022. The associated workflow allows users to run over 80 different user-defined scenarios to identify corridors of geomorphic river recovery.

Use Cases

• Prioritizing river rehabilitation projects based on identified corridors of high recovery potential.
• Building resilience against floods and droughts by analyzing connected sections of river recovery.
• Running user-defined scenarios (over 80 possible) to identify specific reach and loci connections for conservation planning.
• Supporting systematic analysis for creating corridors of geomorphic river recovery via conservation or rehabilitation actions.

Strengths

• Based on the Open Access NSW River Styles database, a foundational geomorphic dataset.
• Workflow enables analysis of over 80 different user-defined scenarios for connection identification.
• Specifically covers all freshwater stream length within the NSW Hunter catchments.
• Published in two Open Access papers with methodology available on protocols.io.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the NSW Hunter catchments region.

Provenance

Source

Macquarie University, D Agnew and K Fryirs (2022), using the NSW River Styles database from DPIE.

Collection Method

Analysis undertaken in ArcGIS using the recovery potential layer of the NSW River Styles database.

Time Range

River Styles database accessed January 2021; analysis published 2022.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-12 19:44:49.503993; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Freshwater stream length of the NSW Hunter catchments, Australia.