This dataset indicates the presence and persistence of water across Queensland between 1988 and 2022. Water is one of the world’s most important resources as it’s critical for human consumption, agriculture, the persistence of flora and fauna species and other ecosystem services. Information about the spatial distribution and prevalence of water is necessary for a range of business, modelling, monitoring, risk assessment, and conservation activities. The water count product is based on water index and water masks for Queensland (Danaher & Collett 2006) and represents the proportion of observations with water present across the Landsat time series as a fraction of total number of possible observations for the period 1 Jan 1988 to 31 Dec 2022. The product has two bands where band 1 is the number of times water was present across the time series, and band 2 is the count of unobscured (i.e. non-null) input pixels, or number of total observations for that pixel. Cloud, cloud-shadow, steep slopes and topographic shadow can obscure the ability to count water presence.

This dataset comprises spatially and temporally dynamic estimates of the monthly latent heat flux (λE) and sensible heat flux (H) for all of Australia. The available energy (A, being net radiation [Rn] less the gound heat flux [G]) can be obtained by adding the λE and H datasets provided. Energy variables have been provided as hydrological equivalent units of depth, normalised to daily rates (mm/d). TERN OzFlux Surface Energy Balance (SEB) data were used to scale MODIS-based covariates of surface temperature less air temperature (Ts – Ta) and Rn using a Spatial and Temporal General Linear Model (ST-GLM) to third order. The ST-GLM SEB model was implemented across all of Australia on a 0.005° spatial grid (~ 500 m) on a monthly timestep from March 2000 through June 2023. Coefficients of the model were determined from the OzFlux network of eddy covariance flux tower data. Three flux tower sites were used to independently validate the accuracy of the model, being Calperum, SA, Howard Springs, NT, and Tumbarumba, NSW. The mean absolute difference (MAD) for λE, H and A was estimated as: 0.37, 0.39 and 0.34 mm/d, respectively. The relative errors determined by the MAD percentage (MADP) for λE, H, and A were estimated to be: 16%, 26%, and 9%, respectively. This dataset represents a new pathway for operational regional- to global-scale estimation of dynamic SEB variables.

Depth of the water table in the Daintree Rainforest, Cape Tribulation site between 2014 - 2015

Evaporation, Transpiration, and Evapotranspiration Products for Australia based on the Maximum Entropy Production model (MEP). This record is an introduction of a method into the MEP algorithm of estimating the required model parameters over the entire continent of Australia through the use of pedotransfer function, soil properties and remotely sensed soil moisture data. The algorithm calculates the evaporation and transpiration over Australia on daily timescales at the 0.05 degree (5 km) resolution for 2003 – 2013. The MEP evapotranspiration (ET) estimates were validated using observed ET data from 20 Eddy Covariance (EC) flux towers across 8 land cover types in Australia and compared the MEP-ET at the EC flux towers with two other ET products over Australia; MOD16 and AWRA-L products. The MEP model outperformed the MOD16 and AWRA-L across the 20 EC flux sites, with average root mean square errors (RMSE), 8.21, 9.87 and 9.22 mm/8 days respectively. The average mean absolute error (MAE) for the MEP, MOD16 and AWRA-L were 6.21, 7.29 and 6.52 mm/8 days, the average correlations were 0.64, 0.57 and 0.61, respectively. The percentage bias of the MEP ET was within 20% of the observed ET at 12 of the 20 EC flux sites while the MOD16 and AWRA-L ET were within 20% of the observed ET at 4 and 10 sites respectively. The analysis showed that evaporation and transpiration contribute 38% and 62%, respectively, to the total ET across the study period which includes a significant part of the “millennium drought” period (2003 – 2009) in Australia. File naming conventions: E – Evaporation T – Transpiration ET – Evapotranspiration For the 8 day ET, Daily T and ET, the suffix nnn indicates day of year, for example: 001 for January 1, 145 for May 25 (leap year) or 26, etc. While for the daily E, the suffix is in the format mmdd (month,day) for example 0101 for January 1, 0525 for May 25.

Measured water quality variables are reported for surface water from a permanent sampling site on Robson Creek, Far North Queensland. The variables include major cations and anions, trace heavy metals, solids (suspended and total) inorganic and organic nitrogen and phosphorus.

Water quality parameters of the surface water from the Robson Creek Rainforest site. The parameters include water temperature, conductivity, water pH, salinity and dissolved oxygen.

Water quality parameters of the surface water from two permanent sampling sites on the Samford Creek, southeast Queensland, Australia, are determined. The parameters include water temperature, flow velocity, turbidity, major cations and anions, plus total inorganic and organic nitrogen and phosphorus.

<p>This dataset provides accurate, high-resolution (30 m) / high-frequency (monthly) / continuous (no gaps due to cloud) actual evapotranspiration (AET) for Australia using the CMRSET algorithm. The CMRSET algorithm uses reflective remotely sensed indices to estimate AET from potential evapotranspiration (PET; calculated using daily gridded meteorological data generated by the Bureau of Meteorology). Blending high-resolution / low-frequency AET estimates (e.g., Landsat and Sentinel-2) with low-resolution / high-frequency AET estimates (e.g., MODIS and VIIRS) results in AET data that are high-resolution / high-frequency / continuous (no gaps due to cloud) and accurate. These are all ideal characteristics when calculating the water balance for a wetland, paddock, river reach, irrigation area, landscape or catchment. </p><p> Accurate AET information is important for irrigation, food security and environmental management. Like many other parts of the world, water availability in Australia is limited and AET is the largest consumptive component of the water balance. In Australia 70% of available water is used for crop and pasture irrigation and better monitoring will support improved water use efficiency in this sector, with any water savings available as environmental flows. Additionally, ground-water dependent ecosystems (GDE) occupy a small area yet are "biodiversity hotspots", and knowing their water needs allows for enhanced management of these critical areas in the landscape. Having high-resolution, frequent and accurate AET estimates for all of Australia means this AET data source can be used to model the water balance for any catchment / groundwater system in Australia. </p><p> Details of the CMRSET algorithm and its independent validation are provided in Guerschman, J.P., McVicar, T.R., Vleeshouwer, J., Van Niel, T.G., Peña-Arancibia, J.L. and Chen, Y. (2022) Estimating actual evapotranspiration at field-to-continent scales by calibrating the CMRSET algorithm with MODIS, VIIRS, Landsat and Sentinel-2 data. Journal of Hydrology. 605, 127318, doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.127318</p> <p> <i>We strongly recommend users to use the TERN CMRSET AET V2.2</i>. Details of the TERN CMRSET AET V2.2 data product generation are provided in McVicar, T.R., Vleeshouwer, J., Van Niel, T.G., Guerschman, J.P., Peña-Arancibia, J.L. and Stenson, M.P. (2022) Generating a multi-decade gap-free high-resolution monthly actual evapotranspiration dataset for Australia using Landsat, MODIS and VIIRS data in the Google Earth Engine platform: Development and use cases. Journal of Hydrology (In Preparation).

The NSW Forest Monitoring Steering Committee commissioned the University of Melbourne to deliver baselines, drivers and trends for water quality and quantity in the NSW Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) regions. Following this work, the University of Melbourne was asked to extend the analysis to cover all NSW forested catchments. Both the initial project (RFA regions) and the extension (all NSW forested catchments) are included in this publication.<br> This dataset contains the estimated Mann-Kendall trends (direction and significance) in seven water quality and six water quantity indicators. The trends were estimated using a temporal regression that included a linear trend, the flow effect, a seasonality component and a lag-1 autoregressive residual model for which water quality data were sampled at daily or higher frequencies. For each water quality variable, trends were estimated for catchments which have 50% catchment area covered by forest, and long-term data monitored at the outlet of each catchment. All trends were estimated with the full historical records of each variable at each catchment in RFA regions, and the extension across all NSW forested catchments also produced short term trends. More detailed metadata for each dataset is included.<br> The seven quality indicators are: total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN), dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), turbidity and water temperature (WTemp). <br> The six quantity indicators are: annual flow, annual rainfall-runoff residual, annual high flow, annual low flow, annual 7-day (7d) low flow and annual cease to flow (CTF).<br> Water monitoring sites analysed included those from the WaterNSW, Bureau of Meteorology, Water Data Online (BoM WDO) and Forestry Corporation NSW (FCNSW).<br> A web mapping application on the NSW Spatial Collaboration Portal depicts these datasets. Access the webapp through the link below: <br> https://portal.spatial.nsw.gov.au/portal/home/item.html?id=03950cf226ac4d459b8c8e3631e17afb