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Kyeamba Creek (MDB Murrumbidgee)
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Name: Rodger Grayson
Affiliation:
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University of Melbourne
Telephone:
Fax:
or
Name: Jeff Walker
Affiliation:
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University of Melbourne
Telephone:
Fax:
The Murrumbidgee watershed (drainage area about 100,000 km2) lies in the eastern headwaters of the Murray-Darling Basin (drainage area about 1,000,000 km2). Although the basin lies within about 100 km of Australia's eas coast, it lies to the west of the coastal divide and drains generally westward. Most of the catchment is mixed rangeland and forest, with mean annual precipitation ranging from over 1000 mm/yr in the east, reducing to 200 mm/yr in the far west. Management of dryland agriculture, and particularly soil salinity problems, are major issues in the basin, as elsewhere in the MDB. There are also irrigation areas at several points along the river. Kyeamba Creek (approx. 500 km^2), 700 mm/yr rainfall) is a research catchment within the Murrumbidgee at which relatively long-term data exist. Kyeamba Creek is gauged at two locations, hence providing the opportunity for nested catchment studies. Various University of Melbourne (UofM) research projects have installed, in addition to stream gages and a precipitation gage network, a transect of 9 soil moisture monitoring sites across the whole Murrumbidgee, as well as 14 sites within Kyeamba Creek. Microgravity sensors and piezometers are also installed at these sites. In addition to the UofM instrumentation, some research sites run by other groups have collected various data from shorter periods across the Murrumbidgee. At present there is a flux tower at Tumbarumba, approximately 100 km east of Kyeamba and in a much wetter climate. There are plans to install a flux tower within Kyeamba Creek however funding is yet to be secured.
DATA SUMMARY:
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Drainage area to outlet: ~530km^2 (Ladysmith), 145km^2 (Book Book)
Basin outlet latitude-longitude: 35.19S 147.51E (ladysmith); 35.35S, 147.55E (Book Book)
Stream gauge period of record: 1975 to 1986 and 2001-ongoing(Ladysmith); 1985 to present (Book Book)
Precipitation gauges: 5 within Kyeamba (2001-ongoing); BoM station at Wagga Wagga 15km from Kyeamba Creek (an AMS and AMO site with 30 mm data - i.e. highest level of BoM sites) 30 min. data since late 1990 and daily data from ~1900. There are many other daily rain stations in the area
Micrometeorological data: from Wagga Wagga - incoming shortwave, screen temperature, specific humidity, wind speed and direction, sunshine hours, cloud cover. From these data 30 min forcing data for rainfall, incoming shortwave, temperature, specific humidity and wind speed have been derived from Jan 2001 - present (see report below).
Turbulent flux measurements: None at present, fluxes tower planned for 2004, subject to funding
Other measurements: In situ TDR at 9 sites along transect across the whole Murrumbidgee; 14 sites within the Kyeamba Creek, mobile TDR measurements for various dates over parts of the Kyeamba catchment and ~10km transects at 3 of the other locations within the broader Murrumbidgee network.
Richter, H., Western, A.W. and Chiew, F.H.S. (2003). Comparisons of soil moisture simulations from the VB95 land surface model against observations. Proceedings of the International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM 2003), Townsville, July 2003, (ISBN 1-74052-098-X), Volume 1, pp. 160-165.
Siriwardena, L., Chiew, F., Richter, H. and A.W. Western. 2003. Preparation of a climate data set for the Murrumbidgee River catchment for land surface modelling experiments. CRCCH working document 03/1, 50pp
Walker, J, Grayson, R. B., Rodell, M; Ellet, K., 2003. Gravity changes, soil moisture and data assimilation. EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Nice, France, April 2003, CDROM
Western, A.W., Richter, H., Chiew, F.H.S., Young, R.I., Mills, G., Grayson, R.B., Manton, M.and T.A. McMahon, 2002. Testing the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's Land Surface Scheme using Soil Moisture Observations from the Murrumbidgee Catchment. Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium, July, 2002.