Edward/Kolety-Wakool River System Selected
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Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Project: Edward/Kolety-Wakool River System Selected Area Technical Report 2019-20 Document title: Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Project: Edward/Kolety-Wakool River System Selected Area Technical Report 2019-20 Date: 30/10/2020 Client name: Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment Project manager: Robyn Watts Authors: Watts R.J., Bond N.R, Duncan M., Healy S., Liu X., McCasker N.G., Siebers A., Sutton N., Thiem J.D., Trethewie J.A., Vietz G., Wright D.W. Institute for Land, Water and Society Charles Sturt University PO Box 789 Albury, NSW 2640 ABN 83 878 708 551 Cover photo: Confluence of Yallakool-Wakool during Commonwealth environmental watering action on 27 August 2019. Photo by Damian McRae, CEWO. Watts, R.J. et al. (2020). Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Project: Edward/Kolety-Wakool Selected Area Technical Report, 2019-20 © Copyright Commonwealth of Australia, 2020 ‘Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Project: Edward/Kolety-Wakool River System Selected Area Technical Report, 2019-20 is licensed by the Commonwealth of Australia for use under a Creative Commons By Attribution 3.0 Australia licence with the exception of the Coat of Arms of the Commonwealth of Australia, the logo of the agency responsible for publishing the report, content supplied by third parties, and any images depicting people. For licence conditions see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/ Citation: This report should be attributed as Watts R.J., Bond N.R, Healy S., Liu X., McCasker N.G., Siebers A., Sutton N., Thiem J.D., Trethewie J.A., Vietz G., Wright D.W. (2020). ‘Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Project: Edward/Kolety-Wakool River System Selected Area Technical Report, 2019-20’. Report prepared for Commonwealth Environmental Water Office. Commonwealth of Australia. The Commonwealth of Australia has made all reasonable efforts to identify content supplied by third parties using the following format ‘© Copyright. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Australian Government or the Minister for the Environment. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that the contents of this publication are factually correct, the Commonwealth does not accept responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the contents, and shall not be liable for any loss or damage that may be occasioned directly or indirectly through the use of, or reliance on, the contents of this publication. Institute for Land, Water and Society Charles Sturt University PO Box789, Albury, NSW 2640 NSW Department of Primary Industries Narrandera Fisheries Centre, PO Box 182, Narrandera NSW 2700 NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment PO Box 363, Buronga NSW 2739 School of Life Sciences La Trobe University PO Box 821,Wodonga 3689 Streamology Waterway science and management Edward-Wakool Angling Association 3 Watts, R.J. et al. (2020). Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Project: Edward/Kolety-Wakool Selected Area Technical Report, 2019-20 Contents Executive summary.............................................................................................................. 5 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 18 2 Environmental water use objectives and watering actions in 2019-20 ........................ 21 3 Monitoring, evaluation and research ........................................................................ 33 4 Hydrology ................................................................................................................ 43 5 Water quality and carbon ......................................................................................... 53 6 Stream metabolism .................................................................................................. 87 7 Aquatic and riverbank vegetation ........................................................................... 101 8 Fish ........................................................................................................................ 121 9 Physical habitat ...................................................................................................... 155 10 Edward/Kolety River primary productivity research ................................................ 190 11 Edward/Kolety River fish spawning research ........................................................... 200 12 Environmental DNA biodiversity research ............................................................... 208 13 Recommendations for future management of environmental water ....................... 247 14 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ 254 15 References ............................................................................................................. 255 4 Watts, R.J. et al. (2020). Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Project: Edward/Kolety-Wakool Selected Area Technical Report, 2019-20 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Introduction The Commonwealth Environmental Water Office (CEWO) Monitoring, Evaluation and Research (MER) Program (2019 to 2022) is an extension of the Long-Term Intervention Monitoring (LTIM) and Murray-Darling Basin Environmental Water Knowledge and Research Project (EWKR) projects, with monitoring, evaluation and research activities undertaken within a single integrated program. This report describes the monitoring, evaluation and research activities that were undertaken in the Edward/Kolety-Wakool system as part of the CEWO MER Program in 2019-20. This project was undertaken as a collaboration between Charles Sturt University, NSW DPI (Fisheries), NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, La Trobe University and Streamology. The fish spawning research was undertaken in partnership with the Edward- Wakool Angling Association. This report has thirteen sections. This introduction (section 1) is followed by a description of the Commonwealth environmental water use objectives and watering actions for this system for 2019-20 (section 2). An overview of the monitoring, evaluation and research undertaken in this system for the MER project and its relationship to LTIM monitoring is described in section 3. Summaries of the evaluation of responses of each indicator to Commonwealth environmental watering and unregulated flow events are presented in sections four to eight; hydrology (section 4), water quality and carbon (section 5), stream metabolism (section 6), riverbank and aquatic vegetation (section 7), and fish movement, fish spawning, fish recruitment and fish community (section 8). Sections nine to twelve report on the outcomes of several components of an integrated research program focused on the Edward/Kolety River. Section 9 reports on physical habitat research, section 10 on primary productivity research, section 11 on fish spawning research and section 12 on eDNA biodiversity research. Recommendations to inform adaptive management of environmental water in the Edward/Kolety-Wakool system in the future is presented in section 13. A summary report (Watts et al. 2020) provides an overview of the monitoring and key findings of the ecosystem responses to environmental watering actions in the Edward/Kolety-Wakool system in 2019-20 including findings across the six years of the combined LTIM/MER program. Monitoring and evaluation The monitoring and research described in this report is undertaken using methods and approaches described in the Edward/Kolety-Wakool MER Plan (Watts et al 2019a). As the MER project is a continuation of the LTIM Project, for some of the monitoring indicators we will evaluate long-term trends across the six years of the LTIM/MER project. The MER project includes monitoring in the following hydrological zones: • Monitoring sites established during the LTIM project that focussed on the upper and mid reaches of the Wakool-Yallakool system (zones 1, 2, 3 and 4) were maintained for the MER project. 5 Watts, R.J. et al. (2020). Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Project: Edward/Kolety-Wakool Selected Area Technical Report, 2019-20 • Twenty sites that were established for fish community surveys in 2010 and were monitored in year one (2015) and year five (2019) of the LTIM project were maintained for the MER project and will be surveyed in year three of MER (2022). • Additional sites were added to the existing network of water quality monitoring sites established during LTIM project. For the MER project there are 17 water quality monitoring sites throughout the whole system. An evaluation of the outcomes of Commonwealth environmental watering undertaken in 2019- 20 was undertaken for the following indicators: Hydrology, Water quality and carbon, Stream metabolism, Aquatic and riverbank vegetation, and fish movement, reproduction, recruitment, and community. Responses to Commonwealth environmental water were evaluated in two ways: i) Indicators that respond quickly to flow (e.g. hydrology, water quality and carbon, stream metabolism, fish movement, fish spawning) were evaluated for their response to specific watering