Braving the frosty starts to the mornings, some have been as low as minus 5ᵒC recorded at our climate stations

There have been a few changes to the Mulloon Rehydration Initiative’s Science & Monitoring team lately.

We recently farewelled our long-standing Research Coordinator Luke Peel.

The team now consists of:

Peter Hazell: Principal Landscape Planner
Tony Bernardi: Hydrologist
Max Brunswick: Field Officer
Chris Inskeep: Science Officer / Spatial and Remote Sensing Specialist

The team has just completed regular maintenance runs where each individual instrument site is visited and regular maintenance and downloads are completed.

These instruments include:

hydrological & groundwater monitoring stations
stream gauges
climate stations or automated weather stations (AWS).

Above left: Chris Inskeep at the Black Jackie Stream Gauge monitoring station.

Above centre: inside One of the stream gauge logger boxes.

Above right: Stream gauging site at Sandhills Creek.

We have also been working closely with our partners HydroTerra on improving the efficiency and quality of our data collection, and processing workflows for our data downloads from the instrumentation and capturing information regarding general field works.

The science team has been working with Mulloon Creek Natural Farms’ Farm Manager Matt Narracott on integrating CiboLabs data into AgriWeb software to gain better insights into farm operations from remotely sensed satellite data.

The team has hosted and participated in visits from:

Richard Campbell and Andrew Wollen from HydroTerra, Matt Pearce from NSW DPI, and Nigel and Suzannah from NVIRO Media who are creating a film for the launch of the upcoming Catchment Rehydration Selection Tool (CReST) project. This project will create a spatial output similar to a heat map, ranking the various areas of NSW for application of landscape rehydration for farm productivity and environmental outcomes. The team have been working closely with our partners HydroTerra in starting to ground truth and assess some of the results of the model/tool. Read more about the CReST project HERE!
Darcy MacCartie from the University of Adelaide has also spent two weeks at Mulloon on an AgriFutures scholarship during his mid-semester break. Darcy was helping the MRI Science Monitoring team with water quality (nutrient and pathogen) sampling, maintenance, improving visibility and marking out for Landscape Function Analysis (LFA) and Rapid Assessment of Riparian Condition (RARC) locations in the field, as well as looking into how the Science Monitoring team and farm operations work together. Darcy also investigated how spatial information, GIS and using drones can benefit and play a greater role in smart farm management and monitoring techniques resulting in better efficiency gains.