Estuary Drainage Catchments

Estuary Drainage Catchment is the hydrological boundary of the catchment draining to each estuary in NSW. There are two spatial layers - a line feature class (EstuaryDrainageCatchmentBdy) to record the source of the catchment boundaries linework and a polygon feature class (EstuaryDrainageCatchment) to record the surface area of the catchments. Both these layers are based on the digitising of catchments for the NSW Stressed Rivers Assessments conducted for the water sharing plan process. The 1:25,000 topographic map series and coastline layers from the Land and Property Management Authority were the primary datasets, modified by on-screen re-digitising of the true hydrological boundary adjacent to the estuary mouth and coastline. Stressed Rivers boundaries were modified further up-catchment when obvious errors were detected. Land draining directly to the sea has been labelled as 'nil estuary'. These layers provided the initial linework for developing the Estuary Tidal Limits datasets.