Important water survey underway for Glenthorne property

As part of the eco­log­i­cal restora­tion of the Glen­thorne prop­er­ty, works are cur­rent­ly under­way to con­duct a study to under­stand water flows on the property.

The work includes a bathy­met­ric sur­vey of the property’s mid­dle dam and mea­sur­ing water flows onto the prop­er­ty from the main north­ern catch­ment area. The bathy­met­ric sur­vey will mea­sure the shape and depth of the dam and pro­vide ecol­o­gists with impor­tant infor­ma­tion includ­ing pre­dict­ing water heights. This will influ­ence the height and con­struc­tion of board­walks around the dam and how water will flow down­stream to ben­e­fit oth­er parts of the property. 

The bathy­met­ric sur­vey uses a hyper-accu­rate GPS – far more pre­cise than a GPS on a mobile phone – and the department’s ​‘Q boat’, which is a remote con­trolled boat equipped with sonar. 

The Q boat will map the bot­tom of the dam using sonar and GPS and pro­duce a 3D pic­ture mod­el of the dam. 

Water flows onto the prop­er­ty will be mea­sured by the Depart­ment for Envi­ron­ment and Water’s hydrog­ra­phy trail­er, which will pro­vide ecol­o­gists with impor­tant infor­ma­tion on rain­fall and runoff to inform the design of a poten­tial wet­land and creek­line at the north­ern end of the property.

Infor­ma­tion col­lect­ed on water flows will also be used to inform works on the property’s mid­dle dam to restore flows to the low­er sec­tion of the property.