Australia's River Basins 1997

Australia's River Basins 1997 is the result of a joint State and Commonwealth project to create a national spatial database of major hydrologic basins. The data has been derived from topographic maps at scales ranging from 1:10 000 to 1:250 000. These basins are the primary building block for the collection of national hydrologic data and the assessment of water resources.

Australia is divided into drainage divisions. The drainage divisions are sub-divided into water regions, which are in-turn sub-divided into river basins. Statistics are gathered and used at all three levels.

This database contains boundary information for 12 divisions, 77 regions and 245 basins. It also contains, for each basin, information relating to its individual basin/region/division name and number. State borders are also included in the data. Data for Division XIII Distant Islands Division is not included.

The former Australian Water Resources Council (AWRC) formally defined the drainage divisions and river basins in the early 1960s and, with minor modifications resulting from improved mapping of the inland arid zone area, has been the basis for the study of Australian hydrology since. The drainage divisions were defined by both the major topographic features of the continent and the main climatic zones to give broadly homogenous hydrologic regions. Within the drainage divisions, the river basins are defined by the major watershed lines.