River Murray Channel Productivity Monitoring 2020. CSIRO Land & Water, Canberra, ACT 2601

Managed flows for the environment are a key mechanism that can be used by water managers to maintain or improve river and floodplain condition. In Spring 2020, New South Wales, Victorian, and South Australian agencies, the MDBA and CEWO coordinated a system scale environmental flow event, also known as the 2020 Southern Spring Flow that mimicked some of the spatial and temporal aspects of the natural flow regimes in the River Murray system. Commencing in October 2020, the productivity response from this coordinated environmental flow event was measured along the River Murray. The elevated water levels from these flows inundated around 25% of Barmah-Millewa Forest before returning to the River Murray. These flows then combined with flows from the Goulburn, Murrumbidgee and Lower Baaka/Darling Rivers to create a flow pulse down the length of the River Murray from Yarrawonga the Coorong in South Australia.