Summer Scores

From December 2017 to February 2021

Why look at the summer data?

Hotter temperatures and more activity (community and tourists) can contribute to increased stressors for our rivers during the summer months - i.e. the mass turtle mortality event happened during the summer. Always, but particularly at this time of year, our rivers need our help to keep them healthy.

Both catchments scored 88% and above for every summer season

Both the Bellinger catchment and Kalang catchment scores decreased in Summer 19/20, most likely due to the 19/20 bushfire season, and both catchments scores have increased for the following Summers.

Our partners would like to highlight that we currently do not test for faecal coliform, which is an important indicator of river health and one that is greatly affected by irresponsible tourism. We are looking to partner with organisations to launch a Summer Monitoring Program to monitor feacal coliform at Bellingen Riverwatch sites and tourist hot spots for 5 consecutive weeks in December/January. If you know of an organisation that would like to partner with us on our Summer Monitoring Program, please contact us on amy@ozgreen.org.au.

Note - We have removed the turbidity scores and grades for our estuarine sites across both catchments as our testing equipment cannot take turbidity readings low enough to be able to quantify scores and grades for this data.

Figure 1 - Bellinger and Kalang catchment overall scores and grades for the months of Summer (December, January , February) from 2017 to 2021, highlighting priority sites
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Priority Sites

Our summer data indicates the following priority sites :

  1. B2

  2. B2.1

  3. B3

  4. B3.1

  5. B4

  6. B7.1

  7. B8

  8. R1

  9. K1

  10. K1.2

  11. K1.4

  12. K2

  13. K3

  14. K4

These are shown as stars on the map below: