Problem/Challenge: John Turnbull is the district Fisheries officer in the Peel area of NSW. With such a large distance to cover he needs to know when a river flow event is coming down the river.

Previously, John had to make a phone call to another government department in Bourke to get information on river height and flows for the Darling River system.

Nowadays he can upload the whole Darling River system in a matter of moments. He can do it at home or from a remote location using a laptop. Knowing what the river is doing before he goes out to a site, helps him to develop strategies for investigation, and save considerable time.

If there has been a rain event, in one weeks time, he can log on to CANRI's River Height and Flow gauging stations and track the water going down the system. An extra metre and a half of water going over the weir tells him the likelihood of people being out there fishing is greatly enhanced. Before it was simply guess work.

Other Fisheries officers are using the live Provision River River, while officers without internet access are simply faxed a copy of the data.

How RIIS works
You simply click on the gauging station nearest to the site that interests you and a graph appears telling you the mean river height (in metres), the discharge in Megalitres per day. Electrical conductivity (EC) and water temperature are also available.

For more information contact
Cecilia Tram
Telephone: 02 9895 7808
e-mail: ctram@canri.nsw.gov.au

 A Fisheries officer chats to an angler on site.

Satellite image showing Bourke (left ) and Warraweena (right) gauging stations.