Tasmanian Government Media Release - 24 June 2008
The Tasmanian Government has made a significant investment over a number of years to ensure that sustainable water management and development is underpinned by accurate and readily available water information. This information is of great value in helping predict and manage the impacts of climate change on future water availability.
The Department of Primary Industries and Water has committed to ensuring the access to high quality water information. The Tasmanian stream flow network has been expanded, with a three-fold increase from 25 stations in 2002. By June 2008, 82 stations will collect stream flow information. The state's ground water monitoring network is also being upgraded and expanded as part of the SMART Farming program.
The Department of Primary Industries and Water's project, "Better information for better outcomes - enhancing water planning in Tasmanian catchments", will greatly increase knowledge of catchment hydrology. The project has now developed 48 of the 54 planned surface water models for targeted catchments, with the remaining six models to be developed before July 2008.
At the end of the project, there will be excellent models of how surface water resources behave in a total of 69 of the state's agricultural catchments and how water resources can be developed in these catchments on a sustainable basis. The project is also developing up to 20 surface-groundwater models.
Funds of over $350,000 in 2007-08 are being used to improve telemetry and data retrieval for both the DPIW stream flow and ground water monitoring networks and to improve data management systems.
