Site Description

The study site for this project is the semi-arid Goulburn River catchment situated approximately 200km west of Newcastle, on the east coast of Austalia. The catchment location is indicated on the MODIS satellite image below. The northern half of this catchment has predominantly low to moderate vegetation cover and is used for cropping and grazing, while the southern half of the catchment is more heavily vegetated, including a National Park. Soils in the northern section are predominatly basalt derivates while those in the south are sandstone derivatives.

Monitoring of soil moisture and streamflow within the Goulburn River catchment is most intense in the northern half of the catchment where there is lower vegetation, specifically in the Krui River and Merriwa River subcatchments. There are a total of 26 soil moisture monitoring sites, 8 stream gauging stations and 5 climate stations providing data for this study. Details of this data are provided on the linked pages from this site.