About Monitoring

The monitoring of water resources provides important information required for sound catchment management. Under the Water Resources Act 1997 the Minister for Environment and Conservation has a number of functions including a responsibility to keep the state and condition of South Australia's water resources under review. The Department of Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation carries out many activities to support this function, including the operation of a network of monitoring sites that have been established across the state. These monitoring sites provide surface water data that assist in the assessment of the health of water resources. The data also contributes to an understanding of the factors that may affect environmental values both now, and in the future.

Both water quality and quantity are measured at many sites including rivers, channels, lakes, reservoirs and dams. Water quantity characteristics can include water levels, volumes and flow rates, whilst water quality can include physical, chemical or biological characteristics. A combination of these individual characteristics assist in assessing the state and condition of water resources and form the basis of developing environmental water requirements. Additional information about water quality and water quantity terms and classifications is provided in ’Interpreting the Information and Data’ within Volume 2 of the State Water Plan 2000.

In addition to recording actual events such as changes in water level, ‘models’ are used to synthesise situations that are difficult to record in the real world, or to combine different sets of actual data to derive new data for a ‘virtual site’, where no actual recordings have been made. Models can also be used to predict potential future scenarios to assist in developing the most appropriate actions to ensure sustainability of our water resources. For further information about surface water monitoring please download a copy of our fact sheet.