Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder Monitoring, Evaluation and Research project: Edward/Kolety-Wakool River system selected area technical report 2022-23

The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder’s (CEWH) Monitoring, Evaluation and Research (Flow-MER) Program (2019 to 2024) is an extension of the Long-Term Intervention Monitoring (LTIM) and Murray-Darling Basin Environmental Water Knowledge and Research Project (EWKR) projects, with monitoring, evaluation and research activities undertaken within a single integrated program.
This report describes the monitoring, evaluation and research activities that were undertaken in the Edward/Kolety-Wakool (EKW) River system as part of the CEWH Flow-MER Program in 2022-23. This project was undertaken as a collaboration between Charles Sturt University, NSW DPI (Fisheries), Murray-Working Wetlands Group and La Trobe University.
This report has nine sections. The introduction (chapter 1) is followed by a description of the Commonwealth environmental water use objectives and watering actions for this system for 2022-23 (chapter 2). An overview of the monitoring, evaluation and research undertaken in this system for the Flow-MER project and its relationship to LTIM monitoring is described in chapter 3. Summaries of the evaluation of responses of each indicator to Commonwealth environmental watering and unregulated flow events are presented in chapters four to eight; hydrology (chapter 4), water quality and carbon (chapter 5), stream metabolism (chapter 6), riverbank and aquatic vegetation (chapter 7), and fish spawning, fish recruitment and fish community (chapter 8). Recommendations to inform adaptive management of environmental water in the EKW River system in the future is presented in chapter nine. A summary report (Watts et al. 2023) provides an overview of the monitoring and key findings of the ecosystem responses to environmental watering actions in the EKW River system in 2022-23 including findings across the nine years of the combined LTIM/Flow-MER program.