Commonwealth Environmental Water Office monitoring, evaluation and research program: Murrumbidgee River System technical report, 2014-2022

The Monitoring, Evaluation and Research program (MER program) builds on the previous Long Term Intervention Monitoring (LTIM) program (2014 - 2019). In order to protect the integrity of the long-term dataset that was developed under the LTIM program (Wassens et al. 2018) much of the methodology employed in this program is a direct continuation of the previous LTIM program. The MER program is the primary framework by which the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office (CEWO) monitors and evaluates the ecological outcomes of Commonwealth environmental watering and its objectives. The MER program will continue to be implemented at seven Selected Areas over a five year period (2019 - 2020 to 2023 - 2024) to inform environmental water management and demonstrate high-level outcomes (in order of priority):
• Evaluate the contribution of Commonwealth environmental watering to theobjectives of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s (MDBA) Environmental Watering Plan
• Evaluate the ecological outcomes of Commonwealth environmental watering at each of the seven Selected Areas
• Infer ecological outcomes of Commonwealth environmental watering in areas of the MDB not monitored• Support the adaptive management of Commonwealth environmental water• Monitor the ecological response to Commonwealth environmental watering at each of the seven Selected Areas.
This evaluation report describes the ecological outcomes of environmental watering actions in the Murrumbidgee Selected Area undertaken in 2014-15 to 2019-20. This report draws on information presented in the Murrumbidgee Monitoring and Evaluation Plan (M&EP) (Wassens et al. 2014a).