Science and Monitoring team update

Sydney University’s Lilly, Floris, Alex and Wiyanda (left to right)

Summer has been a busy time for the science and monitoring team at Mulloon. The flood event at Duralla (reported here) took out our stream gauging station and all the infrastructure at Sandhills Creek, however has resulted in some valuable data captured.

In February we hosted a team from Sydney University including Associate Professor Dr. Floris van Ogtrop and a group of research students; Alex Sun, Lilly Holding and Wiyanda Aflah.

Alex expressed interested in either macroinvertebrate and/or veg surveys/data (BACI/Paired catchment). Alex’s background in biology and mathematics means he will be comfortable with crunching spatial and temporal data. Alex has been looking at the Mulloon Rehydration Initiative (MRI) Rapid Assessment of Riparian Condition or RARC datasets.

Lilly is an honours student interested in looking at fish/water quality and how landscape changes might affect the dominance of endemic versus exotic fish.

Wiyanda will complete his PhD with Prof. Willem Vervoort and Mulloon’s Chris Inskeep. He will develop hydrological models for Mulloon Creek and Llara Farm (Narrabri) that will most likely focus on understanding landscape/ hydrological impacts of NSF/Conservation Ag. He is funded through the One Basin CRC.

Alex and the MRI team conducted field surveys as well as analysis of existing data while Lilly conducted invertebrate sampling at these sites and Wiyanda got a feel for some of the hydrological instrumentation we use while assisting with manual readings, downloads, and maintenance.

The visiting monitoring team with Mulloon’s Tony Barnardi and Peter Hazell, at left.