Dataset
NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water
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Bellinger River Health Program 2017-2022: DPE Science, Water Quality and Macroinvertebrate data

In response to the strong community interest in the Bellinger River turtle population, and a publicly perceived link between turtle mortality and poor water quality, a citizen science program was developed in 2017. This is now known as Bellingen Riverwatch, a high resolution, long-term community led water quality monitoring program, covering the Bellinger and Kalang rivers and their tributaries. Initial discussions with stakeholders identified a strong community interest and investment in river health. It was also identified that, in order to maximise the effectiveness of information collected by the community, a concurrent scientific monitoring program be developed to provide quality assurance and to utilise the community data when reporting. In support of Riverwatch the government-based Bellinger River Health Program (BRHP) was commenced in 2017 by the Estuaries and Catchments Team in the Water, Wetlands and Coasts Science Branch in the Environment, Energy and Science Division of DPIE. (formerly OEH). This dataset is the water quality and aquatic macroinvertebrate data collected for the BRHP by the DPIE Estuaries and Catchments Team. It includes the water quality data collected for the program between autumn 2017 and autumn 2022 and macroinvertebrate data collected from autumn 2018 to autumn 2022. While there were macroinvertebrate samples collected in 2017 quality control and assurance analysis unfortunately led to removal of these samples from the data set.

Data and Resources

Metadata Summary What is metadata?

Field Value
Language English
Edition 2
Purpose The purpose of this data is to provide information of water quality and macroinvertebrate communities in the Bellinger River and its tributaries. It allows for an assessment of river health through scientifically collected and laboratory analysed water quality and macroinvertebrate samples which can be used for comparison to samples collected by citizen scientists in Bellingen Riverwatch.
Frequency of change Unknown
Keywords WATER-Quality,WATER-Rivers
Metadata Date 2021-08-06
Date of Asset Creation 2017-05-01
Date of Asset Revision 2023-10-04
License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Geospatial Topic Environment
NSW Place Name Bellingen
Extent

Dataset extent
Temporal Coverage From 2017-01-05 - 2022-06-30
Datum GDA94 Geographic (Lat\Long)
Legal Disclaimer Read
Attribution NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water asserts the right to be attributed as author of the original material in the following manner: "© State Government of NSW and NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water 2024"