Translucency Monitoring-Hypothesis 4-Murrumbidgee

Data collected between April and October from sites on the Murrumbidgee River downstream of Burrinjuck Dam, comparing regulated sites receiving environmental flows with unregulated reference rivers. The dataset, from the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, tests the hypothesis that environmental flows scour biofilms and improve habitat for aquatic invertebrates. It includes measurements of biofilm, aquatic invertebrates, and water quality.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between flow regimes and biofilm scouring based on environmental release data.
• Assessing habitat quality for invertebrate scrapers and their predators based on biofilm and invertebrate metrics.
• Comparing water quality and ecological health between regulated and unregulated river sites mentioned in the study.

Strengths

• Includes a controlled study design with comparison to reference sites on unregulated rivers.
• Data is associated with a specific ecological hypothesis (IMEF Hypothesis 4) testing environmental flow impacts.
• Covers multiple ecological indicators: biofilm, aquatic invertebrates, and water quality.

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 data_gov_au, focusing on specific Australian rivers.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Field studies comparing biofilm, invertebrate metrics, and water quality at regulated and unregulated river sites.

Time Range

Data collection occurred between April and October (specific year not stated).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-12 16:22:44.242196; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Murrumbidgee River downstream of Burrinjuck Dam, with reference sites on the Goobarragandra, Goodradigbee, and Tumut rivers in New South Wales, Australia.