Hawkesbury temperature and salinity monitoring
Hornsby Shire Council has deployed five probes in order to monitor estuarine health between Wisemans Ferry and Broken Bay. All the probes are set-up on monitoring buoys from which near real time data is transmitted by telemetry to secure websites. See the map below for specific location of the probes. A higher resolution version can be downloaded here - Map of Probe Locations - 170kb.
Click on the links below to access the data for each probe:
The data collected will be used to assess and improve current management practices within the estuary by state and local government. The data will also fill data gaps in the current development of an estuarine hydrodynamic model for the river. The model output will link to Council’s GIS data which will have many different applications. For example, it will assist in predicting risks to the different habitat types under different climate change scenarios. This model will enable Council to appropriately manage the estuary ensuring that sites with potential risks are suitably protected.
Support funding from DECCW has allowed us to deploy these five probes within the Hawkesbury River and to specifically monitor chlorophyll-a, which is one of the most frequently-used estuarine health indicators. Chlorophyll-a is an indicator of the amount of pelagic micro-algae (phytoplankton) present in the water column. Micro-algae require nutrients and sunlight to grow. Consequently chlorophyll-a levels could act as an integrative proxy for nutrient levels, catchment loads and productivity levels in the estuary.
