Monitoring water for life

Communities throughout the Northern Territory have been involved in an intensive effort to monitor the health of water in the Northern Territory.

Landcare groups, Ranger groups, land owners, land managers and school groups in the Daly-Katherine, Roper, Victoria River District, Keep, North East Arnhem Land and Central Australian regions.

Funding

The Northern Territory's Water for Life 2005 program was funded with $186,000 from the Australian Government. It has built on the experiences and relationships of the Northern Territory Waterwatch program, the principle of which was to empower land owners, land managers and other community groups throughout the Territory to participate in water monitoring.

Activities

The Water for Life program aimed to capture new information for comparison with baseline data gathered 10 years previously in the Australian River Assessment Program, AUSRIVAS, a rapid prediction system used to assess the biological health of Australian rivers.

The program saw water monitoring information collected from many regions within the Northern Territory, and included chemical and biological water quality assessments in Victoria, Daly/Katherine, Roper, Coomalie, and North East Arnhem Land areas.

Training in river health and monitoring, as well as equipment was provided to groups to help them sample these sites and every landholder within the catchment was invited to take part. Vast distances were covered to organise one-on-one meetings but it paid off, with every land manager contacted joining up.

Achievements

Every single 1995 AusrivAS site was re-sampled in May and October 2005, with new sites later added to expand the reference sites within the catchment to 60. As a result, the project assisted Charles Darwin University and CRC for Tropical Savannas to develop monitoring techniques for stream and riparian condition and also helped the East Kimberley Landcare Group and WA agencies to develop plans for water monitoring initiatives in the Keep and Ord catchments.

The project gave NRM Facilitators, Landcare groups, Indigenous ranger groups, Northern Territory agency staff, landholders and community members skills and training in river health and monitoring.

An Education Officer also visited 30 schools in Coomalie, Douglas-Daly, Katherine, Roper, Victoria, northeast Arnhem Land and the Greater Darwin area and teacher resources and educational material were produced.

The project resulted in close collaboration with Landcare and Ranger groups in the Daly-Katherine, Roper, Victoria River District, Keep, northeast Arnhem Land and Central Australian regions.

More information

• Lesley Alford, Greening Australia NT: (08) 8981 1344 or Lesley.alford@nt.greeningaustralia.org.au

Australian Government NRM Team
GPO Box 787
Canberra ACT 2601 Australia
1800 552 008 (toll-free)

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NRM, NHT and NAP are jointly administered by the Australian Government departments of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts