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Monitoring in the Darwin Harbour Catchment

Most of the streams in the Darwin Harbour catchment are seasonal. Therefore sampling is carried out once in the early dry season, between April and June.

Peel Creek in the wet season	Peel Creek in the dry season

The ‘edge habitat’ is sampled using a rake to disturb the habitat and a net to catch the water bugs and plant material that is raked loose. This procedure needs two people working together (see photo).

Sampling of the edge using a rake and net.	The edge habitat which is mainly composed of large and fine roots and soil.

The Darwin Harbour catchment is the focus of urban and industrial activity and development in the Northern Territory. The health of the streams in the catchment is important. Regular monitoring commenced in 2001 with 12 sites. This was increased to 18 sites over the following years (see map below)

Map: Overview of AUSRIVAS monitoring sites in the Darwin Harbour catchment.

Moving the mouse over a site brings up the name of the stream. Clicking on a site opens a page with details on the site.

An overview of the aquatic health expressed in AUSRIVAS bands for all of the locations is given in Table1. The OE50 scores obtained are available for each stream by clicking on the location on the map.

The site location numbers are allocated in collaboration of NRETA’s Water Resources hydrological database.

Location	Stream	2001	2002	2003	2004#	2007*	2009	2010*	2012
G8155625	Amy Creek						A	A
G8150102	Bees Creek	X	B	A	A	A	A	A
G8155511	Bennett Creek			A	A		A	A
G8155088	Berry Creek	X	X	X	A	A	A
G8155469	Blackmore River	X	A	B			A	A
G8155474	Brooking Creek	B	B	B			B	B
G8155670	Darwin River near Leonino Rd						A	X
G8155479	Darwin River near Old Bynoe Road		X	A		A	B	A
G8155476	Elizabeth River near Alverly Road		A	A			A	B
G8155472	Elizabeth River near Elizabeth Valley Rd	A	A	A			A	A
G8155473	Elizabeth River near Stuart Hwy	A	B	A	B	A	A	A
G8155669	Elizabeth River tributary near Elizabeth Valley Rd						A	A
G8155478	Fly Creek		A	A			A	A
G8150177	Gunn Point Rd						A	A
G8155477	Howard River near Girraween Road	A	A	A	A		A	A
G8150179	Howard River near Gunn Point Road	B	B	B	B		B	B
G8155475	Howard River near Pioneer Road	A	A	A			A	B
G8155468	Mitchell Creek	A	B	B	A	B	A	C
G8155628	Parkin Rd Creek						A	A
G8155470	Peel Creek	A	A	A	A	A	A	X
G8155633	Pioneer Creek						A	A
G8150127	Rapid Creek	B	B	B	B	B	B	C
G8155510	Wells Creek			B	A		A	A

* No sampling carried out in 2008 and 2011.
# Processing method differed in 2005 and 2006, data not shown.

Note: The model was revised in 2009. Therefore some results might be slightly different than published on this web site previously.

Definition of the bands used in table 1 (above) and their interpretations according to the AUSRIVAS user manual.

Overall the stream health of the Darwin Harbour catchment is very good with most of the streams revealing a condition comparable to undisturbed reference steams. Rapid Creek is of poorer health being the only stream with a large proportion of the catchment urbanised, though OE50 scores have increased recently. Mitchell Creek seems to show a decrease in water quality over the years, which is likely to be related to the pressure of urban development in the catchment.