NSW Farm Dam Survey

Water availability remains highly variable across NSW.

• Highly variable rainfall and warm temperatures have contributed to decline in farm dam levels in parts of central and western NSW.
• Many parts of NSW continue to have low farm dam levels, at below 20% of their capacity.
• The farm dam assessment was not possible for some parts of NSW due to missing data.

The Farm Dam Water assessment draws on the DEA Waterbodies product which detects all water bodies in the size range of 3125 m² – 10 km². Landsat remote sensing data is used to compare the current water surface area in each water body to the maximum extents on record between the year 1987 and present. Large storages that are potentially part of irrigation schemes or river reaches are excluded from the analysis. This provides monitoring of around 50,000 farm dams each month.