Environment Protection Authority Victoria (EPA) has won a prestigious state-wide award for excellence in waterway management and innovation for a unique project utilising macroinvertebrates - or ‘waterbugs&rsquo
EPA’s RiverMAP: a River Health Tool for Decision Makers project uses waterbugs to assess the health of rivers across Victoria. The project won the ‘University of Melbourne award for Building Knowledge in Waterway Management’ – a category of the River Basin Management Society’s recent annual awards.
EPA RiverMAP Analyst Lauren Hodgson said it was wonderful to be recognised for the project.
“Waterbugs are a good indicator of river health because they are sensitive to changes in the environment that affect water quality,” Ms Hodgson said.
“For the past 25 years EPA has led the way in collecting and using waterbugs to improve our understanding of how land use, vegetation cover, and human activities impact on the health of rivers and streams.
“The RiverMAP model uses waterbug samples collected at about 2,500 locations to estimate the river health conditions at more than 50,000 streams across Victoria.
“The RiverMAP project brings this knowledge together in a tool that predicts the health of rivers, and potential improvements from revegetation efforts.
“By using the model, we can manipulate environmental conditions, such as vegetation cover, cropping, grazing, mining and urban development, to see how these might affect the waterbugs and, therefore, river health.
“This, in turn, helps catchment managers decide where to focus river revegetation efforts for maximum success, and could also save wasted efforts on revegetation projects that were never likely to work,” she said.
RiverMAP is a collaboration with the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP), and the catchment management authorities of Glenelg Hopkins, Corangamite and North Central. EPA also partners with Melbourne University, Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology, and the Arthur Rylah Institute, and works with community groups such as WaterWatch and Creeklink to deliver the RiverMAP project.
The River Basin Management Society is a representative body for professionals working with land, water and natural resource management in Australia.