Biological and physical data from river sites across a gradient of catchment area under grazing in northern Tasmania

Created 25/06/2025

Updated 25/06/2025

River sites were sampled during the summers of 2008/09 and 2009/10 in a survey designed to identify correlations between commonly used river condition variables and grazing land-use. Potential stream sites in northern Tasmania were screened by catchment size, northing and slope, and according to attributes aimed at minimising confounding variables, maintaining broad consistency in landscape and geomorphological context, and promoting independence among sites. A set of 27 survey sites was selected across a gradient from low to high proportion of land under grazing in their upstream catchments. Catchment sizes varied from 20-120 km2 and proportion grazing from 0-80%. Macroinvertebrates were sampled using Surber sampler. All macroinvertebrates within a 20% sub-sample identified to family and counted, with individuals from the insect orders Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera identified to genus/species (by Laurie Cook, UTAS). Algal abundance was estimated at each site as the proportion of algal cover and as areal density of benthic chlorophyll a. Physical data variables collected were: water temperature, conductivity, turbidity, pH, total alkalinity, nitrate+nitrate, dissolved reactive phosphorus, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, overhead shading, the proportion of fine sediments within the sampled riffle zone, accumulated abstraction index and accumulated regulation index. For more information see: See Magierowski RH, Read SM, Carter SJB, Warfe DM, Cook LS, Lefroy EC and Davies PE. Inferring landscape-scale land-use impacts on rivers using data from mesocosm experiments and artificial neural networks. PLOS ONE.

Files and APIs

Tags

Additional Info

Field Value
Title Biological and physical data from river sites across a gradient of catchment area under grazing in northern Tasmania
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/19fd162c-4726-4482-9248-308125fe593c
Contact Point
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network�s Data Discovery
Regina.Magierowski@utas.edu.au
Reference Period 01/12/2008 - 31/03/2010
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        144.42578,
        -42.01436
      ],
      [
        148.73242,
        -42.01436
      ],
      [
        148.73242,
        -40.22686
      ],
      [
        144.42578,
        -40.22686
      ],
      [
        144.42578,
        -42.01436
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network "Biological and physical data from river sites across a gradient of catchment area under grazing in northern Tasmania". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/biological-and-physical-data-from-river-sites-across-a-gradient-of-catchment-area-under-grazing