Water Management Data
National Land and Water Resources Audit (NLWA)
The most recent Australia-wide perspective on water management is the Australian Water Resources Assessment 2000 (NLWRA, 2001), producing national datasets including:
- Australian Surface Water Management Areas, defining 325 regions used by State/Territory water management agencies for reporting of the status of water management. A linked database contains information on the availability, use, allocation, sustainability and management of water in these defined regions. Data from the 1985 Review of Australia's Water Resources and Water Use (DPIE, 1987) is also available for comparison;
- Australian Groundwater Management Units, Unincorporated Areas and Provinces, involving the mapping of 538 groundwater management units and unincorporated areas, the former being the groundwater systems that are defined and recognised by State/Territory agencies for management purposes, the latter being residual areas with low levels of groundwater development and corresponding management input. These have been aggregated into 69 groundwater provinces for reporting purposes. Information such as surface area, groundwater allocation and use, average salinity, depth to top of aquifer, and an estimate of sustainable yield has been compiled for each unit where available. This allowed a national analysis of where groundwater resources are over-allocated or over-used relative to sustainable yield estimates;
- Australian Irrigation Areas (Version 1A), showing designated and actual irrigation areas across Australia. A gridded version indicating the proportion of land area under irrigation for each 0.05-degree land cell is also available;
- Major Water Resources Infrastructure, containing the location of 1,237 dams and their unique identifiers, names and total capacity for water storage;
- Surface Water Gauging Stations, with the location of 3,143 significant monitoring stations for surface water management, as well as a range of statistics for flow and rainfall.
Metadata and the facility to freely download are available for these datasets from the Australian Natural Resources Data Library.
Water Account for Australia.
This is a compilation of detailed statistics on water supply, consumptive use and management of water, by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) . The data is obtained from government agencies, industry associations, businesses and farmers. The Water Account has been prepared for between 1993-94 and 1996-97 as well as for 2000-01. The ABS also provides other water-related statistics including irrigation data in Agricultural Commodities (ABS 7121.0), household use of water in Environmental Issues: Peoples Views and Practices 2001 (ABS 4602).
References
DPIE, 1987. 1985 review of Australia's water resources and water use. Australian Water Resources Council, Department of Primary Industries and Energy, vol 1-2.
NLWRA, 2001. Australian Water Resources Assessment, 2000. National Land and Water Resources Audit.