Revision of the River Murray WQ Monitoring Program

This report includes the River Murray revised Water Quality Monitoring Program to characterise the overall water quality changes over time. This revision has been informed by the Murray–Darling Freshwater Research Centre investigation of May 2013 focussing only on the water chemistry component.

The revised program narrows down the sampling network to a minimum by reducing the number of sampling sites from 36 to 28, reducing some parameters sampled at certain sites and reducing the frequency of sampling in the tributaries.

An integral part of the Water Quality Monitoring Program is the long-term monitoring of phytoplankton (algae). The phytoplankton component samples all algal species monthly at 12 locations to characterise the changes in the broader phytoplankton community over time.