Monitoring river health

This project aims to draw together research and experience about the social, cultural and technical issues associated with monitoring river health in the wet-dry tropics.

The project team is working with Federal, state and territory governments to synthesise the learnings from previous TRaCK projects and other monitoring projects, and provide options for alternative and new approaches to river health monitoring in the region.

The past few years have seen increasing investment in community-based, participatory natural resource management and monitoring programs across northern Australia. These include the Working on Country Program, the Turtle and Dugong Project, and the Kimberley Waterways Education Project. TRaCK also trialled a community-based participatory monitoring program with Indigenous groups in the Daly (NT) and Fitzroy (WA) catchments.

These programs have sought to involve local people in monitoring aquatic ecosystems, and are potentially very important in the region because while vast areas, sparse populations and limited government resources make widespread monitoring programs difficult, community interest in keeping local waterways healthy is high.

With the interest in monitoring tools like I-Tracker increasing, it is timely to reflect on the outcomes of these programs to identify and document the challenges and reasons for the success of various approaches, and to make practical recommendations about ecological indicators suitable for monitoring into the future.

What’s coming up?

1. A technical workshop involving researchers from TRaCK, and representatives from other monitoring initiatives and government agencies was held in Brisbane on August 16. The workshop focused on the efficacy of current approaches to river health monitoring in the wet-dry tropics and identified new technical knowledge, which will soon be reported.

2. A session on water health was facilitated by TRaCK researchers at a forum bringing together Indigenous rangers from across northern Australia. The forum was hosted by the Northern Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance from August 30 to September 1 in Mary River Park, NT. Broadly, the water health session covered participatory monitoring projects, which indicators to measure, standardising water health monitoring and successful initiatives. A major outcome from this workshop will be recommendations for a new land-based patrol I-Tracker monitoring sequence.