Long-term Trends of Water Quality and Quantity in Forested Water Catchments in NSW 

The NSW Forest Monitoring Steering Committee commissioned the University of Melbourne to deliver baselines, drivers and trends for water quality and quantity in the NSW Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) regions. Following this work, the University of Melbourne was asked to extend the analysis to cover all NSW forested catchments. Both the initial project (RFA regions) and the extension (all NSW forested catchments) are included in this publication.
This dataset contains the estimated Mann-Kendall trends (direction and significance) in seven water quality and six water quantity indicators. The trends were estimated using a temporal regression that included a linear trend, the flow effect, a seasonality component and a lag-1 autoregressive residual model for which water quality data were sampled at daily or higher frequencies. For each water quality variable, trends were estimated for catchments which have 50% catchment area covered by forest, and long-term data monitored at the outlet of each catchment. All trends were estimated with the full historical records of each variable at each catchment in RFA regions, and the extension across all NSW forested catchments also produced short term trends. More detailed metadata for each dataset is included.
The seven quality indicators are: total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN), dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), turbidity and water temperature (WTemp).
The six quantity indicators are: annual flow, annual rainfall-runoff residual, annual high flow, annual low flow, annual 7-day (7d) low flow and annual cease to flow (CTF).
Water monitoring sites analysed included those from the WaterNSW, Bureau of Meteorology, Water Data Online (BoM WDO) and Forestry Corporation NSW (FCNSW).
A web mapping application on the NSW Spatial Collaboration Portal depicts these datasets. Access the webapp through the link below:
https://portal.spatial.nsw.gov.au/portal/home/item.html?id=03950cf226ac4d459b8c8e3631e17afb 

We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. 

This dataset was created as part of the NRC Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program to establish baselines, drivers and trends of water quality and quantity in NSW. 

Data not provided.