Waterbug workshop

The Citizen Science program is very excited to be hosting two workshops – one in Strathalbyn and one in the Riverland, featuring guest speaker and author, John Gooderham. John is well known in the waterbug world for his book aptly titled “The Waterbug Book”.
Macroinvertebrates (waterbugs) can tell us a lot about the health of our rivers, streams, ponds and wetlands. Most people would be familiar with the humble old yabby? What about the water boatman and dragonfly? Well there’s plenty more bugs in the river, you just have to know what you’re looking for.
John is passionate about helping citizen scientists to better understand and assess the health of their local waterways– and what lives in them.
If you are interested in learning how to identify waterbugs and contribute to the SA Murray-Darling Basin Waterwatch program, please register. Limited spots are available for both workshops so book in early to avoid disappointment.

Lower Murray
Friday 5 May
Strathalbyn Natural Resource Centre, 6 Catherine Street
9 am to 4:30 pm including lunch and short field trip.

Riverland
Monday 8 May
McCormick Centre for the Environment, Ral Ral Ave, Renmark
9 am to 4.30 pm including lunch and short field trip.

BioBlitz – spring results

We have recently received the macroinvertebrate (waterbug) results back from the Angas and Finniss Bioblitz held in December.

As this was the first Bioblitz in these catchments for the spring season, the collected data provides another baseline for comparison in future years. Over 100 different waterbug taxa were identified across the two catchments.  Highly abundant taxa found included Chironomus spp. (non biting midge larvae), Copepoda (copepods) and Cladocera (water fleas).  The new survey site at Prospect Hill (pictured above), at the top of the Finniss catchment, produced the highest abundance of taxa and the highest species richness. 

The presence or absence of certain macroinvertebrate taxa is an excellent indicator of the health and flow regime of water catchments. Once identified, taxa can be classified into ‘trait groups’ which organises them according to their expected response to environmental conditions based on shared characteristics. Certain trait groups respond negatively or positively to an increase or decrease in the number of days when there is no water flow (zero flow days) in ephemeral rivers. Long term monitoring is needed to gather enough macroinvertebrate data to analyse the impact of changes in flow regime at our survey sites, but it is something that we are working towards with the community.

A more detailed Bioblitz report will be available shortly.

Riverine Recovery Project funding available

Fund My Project - Riverine Recovery in the Riverland and Mid-Murray (between Wellington and the SA border) has $200,000 available for community groups, individuals and organisations to fund projects that will promote the environmental objectives of the Riverine Recovery Project (RRP), and leave a lasting legacy of knowledge, information, understanding and involvement in wetland management and riverine recovery.

Grants of between $5,000 and $20,000 (plus GST) are available to projects that meet the eligibility criteria. We are looking for small-scale works and activities to be undertaken by the community for implementation by 30 June 2018.

If you have an interest in improving the health and resilience of the Murray River wetlands, floodplains and backwaters, and in improving the efficiency of environmental water use, go to the Information for Applicants page to read about the eligibility criteria and the types of projects that can be funded.

If you have a great idea for a project then we want to hear from you. Applications will close at 5pm
on 18 April 2017.

For all information and to submit applications please visit - https://yoursay.sa.gov.au/about-riverine

#murrayflows results

At the end of November 2016 the River Murray hit its peak flow into SA at 95 GL/day, the highest since 1993. Over December, these peak flows continued down the river, inundating floodplains, wetlands and infrastructure.

The DEWNR Surface Water team worked with River Murray Operations, the Community Engagement team and SAMDB Citizen Science to support a social media campaign asking the community to provide information about how the high flows were impacting their local area. Using Twitter with the hashtag #murrayflows, DEWNR received 181 tweets, 41 of which included GPS coordinates of the water edge along the length of the SA Murray floodplain.

The Surface Water team are currently using the data collected to validate the inundation model of the River Murray between Lock 3 and Wellington. This model will enable them to understand inundation patterns across the rest of the floodplain where no data was collected, as well as representing different flow patterns in the future. This will be used to assess when shacks and road access become affected as flows increase, helping us all prepare for natural flood events (such as this) as well as future watering for environmental benefits.

Bat workshops

Bat nights have continued across the region over the summer.  Berri Barmera Landcare and Loxton District Landcare hosted two very popular bat nights in February. Over 60 people attended the workshop at Willabalangaloo, and more than 20 at Loxton. It was great to see a mix of young and old participating in the workshops, learning about bats and providing a helping hand in monitoring on the night.  Another successful workshop was recently held at Mt Compass in March.

We’d love to turn all this interest into data on what the bats are up to in your neck of the woods.  The weather is still warm enough to do bat recordings so if you’re interested in borrowing a bat monitoring kit please contact Bec Stevens or Sylvia Clarke. or your Landcare Association.

Frogwatch SA

The FrogWatch SA program is nearly 1 year old!  In that time 271 frog surveys have been submitted from within the Murray Valley region and they have all been verified, which is a fantastic effort. Excitingly, 10 of these recorded the vulnerable Southern Bell Frog, Litoria raniformis.  We hope to have a closer look at all the data from our region shortly to see what it is telling us about the health of our frog populations. 

Some frogs are still actively calling through autumn so if you hear any please record it on the FrogWatch SA app and share it on the database.

Share your experience

The Natural Resources team is always interested in your stories and experiences. If you are willing to share your story in an upcoming edition of the Citizen Science eNewsletter, please contact us.