NSW Surface Water Quality Annual Reports for Major Rivers and Catchments

Almost 200 monthly monitoring sites across New South Wales rivers and streams provide data for annual water quality reports. The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water uses this data to calculate a water quality index and analyze long-term trends. Reports from 2022-2023 include a new analysis of trends over the preceding 10 years.

Use Cases

• Calculate water quality index scores based on the monthly monitoring data mentioned in the description.
• Analyze long-term trends in water quality over the last 10 years, a feature added to recent reports.
• Correlate water quality data with catchment use, rainfall, and flow data included in the reports.
• Assess river health across major catchments within the Murray-Darling Basin and coastal regions.

Strengths

• Data is collected monthly at almost 200 sites, suggesting a high spatial and temporal resolution.
• Reports include a water quality index rating for each site, providing a standardized metric.
• The 2022-2023 reports incorporate a new 10-year trend analysis, extending the temporal scope.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Data is delivered as PDF reports, which may require extraction to a structured format for analysis.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, via the State Water Quality Assessment and Monitoring Program (SWAMP).

Collection Method

WaterNSW is employed to conduct monthly water quality monitoring at designated sites.

Time Range

Reports include long-term trends over the last 10 years; monitoring is ongoing.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-17 17:41:16.461771; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Major rivers and streams within New South Wales, including the Murray-Darling Basin and North coast, Hunter, and South coast catchments.