Upper Murrumbidgee Waterwatch engages the community in the environment through monitoring and caring for our catchments. We educate and raise awareness in schools and the community on issues concerning catchment health and we use data collected by volunteers to inform policy and on ground catchment management.

Upper Murrumbidgee Waterwatch volunteers collect data on water quality, waterbug diversity and abundance, and riparian vegetation condition at over 200 sites in the catchment. To use these data to assess the health of our waterways and the broader catchment, sites are grouped into reaches (segments of waterways and/or related waterbodies) and the data are summarised and presented by reach. To ensure that data collected from a small number of sites can be considered representative of a reach, reaches consist of similar sections of waterway as defined by criteria including the size (magnitude / stream order), surrounding land uses, and underlying geology of the included waterways and waterbodies.

This dataset contains annual scores of the water quality, waterbug diversity and abundance, riparian vegetation condition and overall health of 100 reaches (stretches of waterway) in the Upper Murrumbidgee River catchment, 2015 - 2023. Scores are calculated from monthly water quality data collected by Upper Murrumbidgee Waterwatch volunteers, and waterbug and riparian vegetation assessments conducted by Waterwatch staff. Detailed methods can be found in the Catchment Health Indicator Program (CHIP) reports produced each year by Upper Murrumbidgee Waterwatch: https://www.act.waterwatch.org.au/data/chip-reports