NSW Farm Dam Survey

Water availability remains highly variable across NSW

• Farm storage levels continue to remain high in the far west of the state.
• Many parts of western, southern and central NSW continue to have low farm dam levels, at below 20% of their capacity.
• The influence of late May and early June rainfall on farm dam levels will be available in the next Update.
• The farm dam assessment was not possible for some parts of NSW due to missing data due to cloud cover during the period.

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.