Track worlds.... better late than never

Unfortunately things didn't quite pan out as I might have hoped.  A mis-timed start in the 500 cost me a PB (but didn't effect the overall result), while my legs didn't want to play in the pursuit.  All credit to my team-mate Alex who put in a fantastic effort to smash her PB and take the title.

The team sprint was a chance to redeem myself and get a good start out of the gates for the team.  A top 10 finish meant points towards Paralympic qualification spots and for a team of 'enduros' it wasn't a bad effort. To finish off with the scratch race.  What can I say.... first ever race fall and it had to come at a world championships!  On the upside I got back into the race and finished 3rd despite a 10cm splinter through the thigh.  So two silvers and a bronze but no stripes this time around.  Once again great support from all of our paracycling team, coaches, mechanics, managers, physio's and massage.

So back home and a chance to regroup, work out what didn't go quite right and then plan for the next 6 months or so leading up to the London Paralympics.  Team hasn't been finalised as yet but we should find out in the next week or so. 

Paracycling World Track Cycling Championships (and more flooding)

After a good training block in Adelaide the Aussie paracycling team is now settling into the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, LA with less than a week to go till the start of racing. Back home the rain continues to fall and Moree (NW NSW) is underwater again with reportedly the worse flooding in over 60 years.  I'll be able to update the imagery data for the Gwydir in mid-late February when I get back to the desk again.

The race program this year looks very exciting. Kicking off with the 500m TT a rest day, then the 3k pursuit.  On the last day we have the team sprint and then a scratch race (exhibition race) to finish the championships. In the meantime we are heading over to the beach to do a bit of training and take in the scenery while we are at it. With any luck I'll remember to take some photo's today!

But wait.... there is more

WATER that is.  Further rainfall in the catchment resulted in a second peak passing through the Gwydir River at Yarraman gauge on the 13th December. The plots below (extracted from the http://waterinfo.nsw.gov.au/ website) show the flow through this gauge (418004) over the last month with a cumulative volume of at least 450 GL.  Note that the 'flat top' of the peaks may be an underestimate as the floods overtop the river banks making accurate real-time gauging difficult.  To put this in context, the 1998 floods saw a 40 day cumulative inflow of 366 GL, however the event in 1998 continued for several months with over 800 GL in total.  It remains to be seen what the next few months hold for the Gwydir in 2011/2012.

Gwydir River at Yarraman gauge data 2011 (source: http://waterinfo.nsw.gov.au/)

The sky cleared for a couple of days and provided a good view of the system on the 14th December.  The updated image has been added to the images blog http://wheelsandwetlands.blogspot.com/2011/12/image-updates.html.  The secondary flood pulses can be seen moving down the Gingham Channel, Lower Gwydir and also towards Thalaba Creek to the south. Also notable is the vegetation response across the catchment and in the core wetland areas.

Gwydir Wetlands - a little bit of background

Or   While waiting for the cloud to clear!
 

Murray Darling Basin Wetlands (MDBMC 1995)
 http://www2.mdbc.gov.au/nrm/water_issues/wetlands.html



That is the downside of using satellite imagery (or in particular surface reflectance from the visible and NIR ranges) as cloud cover can obscure the surface.  This is generally not a longer term monitoring problem for most of the Murray Darling Basin in Australia as we typically have few cloud days overall. In contrast the monsoon floods further north can be obscured for much of the season.  



The Gwydir wetlands are located in NSW, Australia west of Moree (Wetland No. 12 on the Murray Darling Basin Wetlands map).  Local evaporation in the wetlands is far greater than the local rainfall so the  wetlands rely on catchment inflows from the Gwydir River running west off the Great Dividing Range.

Under natural conditions modelling has suggested that the wetlands would have received mean annuals flows around 520 GL. Since the early 1900's the flows to the wetlands have been dramatically reduced with figures suggesting a 70% reduction in flooding flows.

• Cuttings to divert flows to the Mehi River and Carole Creek (c1902).
• Development of Copeton Dam in the upper catchment with a capacity of 1360 GL (1968-1976).
• Use of water for irrigation 
• Development of off-river storages.



The Gwydir Wetlands are one of few terminal wetlands (where water generally does not flow through the wetlands but is retained in all but the biggest floods) found in inland NSW and it contains one of the largest stands of water couch and marsh clubrush remaining in NSW. A range of communities form depending on flood frequency, duration and depths including macrophyte wetlands, lignum shrublands and river redgum forest areas.

The wetlands also contain Ramsar listed reserved on both newly acquired crown land and private land and the whole lower Gwydir wetlands provide breeding and feeding grounds for large numbers of colonial water bird species (over 500,000 breeding pairs in 1998) and habitat for many threatened species.  Over 255 bird species in total and at least 75 species of waterbirds have been recorded in the Gwydir Wetlands (Spencer, 2010).



Monitoring vegetation in the Gwydir Wetlands
(DLWC IMEF program, ~2004)



Old Dromana 2004





Why Wheels?



To cut a long story short, I injured my lower back in 2007 which led to permanent nerve damage to my leg. To get fit again and try to regain movement and strength after the injury I got back on the bike and started training and racing with the Vikings Cycling Club, ACT. A fantastic bunch of people helped me out and Canberra really is a great place to be out and about on a bike. One thing led to another and I got involved in paracycling (basically road and track cycling for athletes with disabilities, check out this youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utaMVVHGvPk&noredirect=1) in 2009.  Before I knew it I had qualified for the Australian Road Team and was off to Italy for Road World Championships.  That was the start of an amazing few years for me.   
        

Along the way I have set a few world records (and seen them broken), won 4 world championships and a world cup series, been lucky enough to get to ride and race in Europe, Canada and New Zealand, picked up several awards including  paracyclist of the year and the ACT sportstar of the year, finished my PhD and met some amazing people.  I have also had a lot of help from coaches including Sian Mulholland, Glenn Doney, James Victor and Peter Day, not to forget my novice days with John Armstrong and Simon Dwyer. Keren Faulkner, Anouska Edwards and Sarah Page have kept the body in shape with physio and massage while a whole team have helped out with strength and conditioning at the ACTAS gym.

Andrew Millar from Canberra Hospital, and more recently Darren Periera from Neuromuscular Orthotics based in Melbourne have helped get me walking and riding better with leg braces.  Then there are the mechanics, managers and support staff that travel overseas with us and keep everything running smoothly and without the funding support from the Australian Paralympic Committee none of any of this would be possible.

This year On The Rivet in Phillip have come on board and helped me get on an awesome Trek Madonne  6.9 SSL as well a keep all my bikes in tip top condition.  Alex and Tony at Langley Pino Eyewear have been great getting me seeing clearly though a pair of prescription Rudy Project glasses.

 Looking forward I will be travelling down to Melbourne next week to compete in the Victorian Track Championships and spend some time on the boards before the National Paracycling Track Championships on the 15th and 16th December.  Then its down to final training preparation for the UCI World Track Championships in L.A., USA in early February. Longer term I hope to make the Aussie team for the London Paralympics next year.

Image updates

27/11/2011

After a couple of cloudy days the Modis imagery from 11:00am this morning shows clear skies over the wetlands.  Thanks to Andrew Falkenmire and Neal Foster for pointing me onto the new Modis real-time website its possible to get the NDVI colour images directly from the NASA/GSFC, Rapid Response website. 
 http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?subset=Australia6 




28/11/2011

 These images can be viewed at various resolutions, or can be downloaded as a .tif file for use in GIS but are RGB images. For subsequent analysis however, the surface reflectance products will be used.






29/11/2011

So far we have post flood images for the 27-29/11 and 2/12*. All images are taken around 11am AEDT. Again, best viewed by clicking on the first image, then scrolling through. The image from the 29/11 includes some cloud cover  from the west which can often display as brown or even blue in the NDVI image. Fortunately the area over the wetlands themselves was clear of cloud on this day. 


2/12/2011

 So the flood pulse is now heading down the Barwon and Mehi Rivers and Moomin and Thalaba Ck to converge around and to the south of Collarenebri. In the wetland areas around Gingham Channel and the Lower Gwydir it is difficult to see where there is still standing water as there is vegetation cover. NDVI is a vegetation index where high values (near 1) are highly productive vegetation cover and very low values (<0) are open water. In between is soil (~0.2) however vegetation with water may also show a moderate value in the NDVI and be impossible to distinguish from soil or low cover of vegetation. Similarly wet soil may start to look like water. This is where other information is needed to fully understand the flooding.


14/12/2011 Gwydir Floods


** Updated 19/12/2011 with image from the 14/12/2011.  A further peak of around 70GL passed through the Gwydir River at Yarraman Gauge on the 13/12/2011 with the extra flooding visible travelling down the Gingham Channel, Lower Gwydir River and also into Thalaba Creek to the South

Aerial photos and more flows

Andrew Falkenmire from the Office of Environment and Heritage Flood Unit in Tamworth was up in the air capturing the flooding on Sunday 27th. Some of the photos are shown here (don't have locations yet). The Flood Unit also put together some local information on the flooding which they have been kind enough to share for this blog. 

Information re flooding in Moree area

·         Gravesend (confined flow from upper catchment) –  Peak Gauge Height 14.27m – highest since the floods of the 1970’s, only exceeded in the last 60 years by the 1950’s and 1970’s floods.  Approx 12 yr ARI (about 8% AEP)

·         Pallamallawa – Peak Gauge Height 10.45.  Approx 20 yr ARI (5% AEP).  The current levee provides limited protection to the town, but did not overtop in this flood.  A Floodplain Management Study has recently been undertaken, and the levee is currently in the process of being upgraded (although still to be at limited height). 

·        Moree ( Mehi River ) – Peak Gauge Height 10.20m approx 20 yr ARI (5% AEP) – entered low lying areas of the town.  This flood has only been exceeded in the last 60 years by the floods of the 1950’s and 1970’s.

·         Garah – close to Gil Gil Ck, Garah was flooded.  There was extensive flooding from the local catchment of Gil Gil Ck.

·     Local rainfall and runoff - there was very high rainfall in the local catchments north and south of Moree.  Rainfall ranged from 113mm at Moree to 190 mm at Gravesend on Friday-Saturday after lead up rain during the week of approximately 100 mm which wet the catchments and caused initial runoff.   There was extensive flooding from Gil Gil Ck to the north, which caused extensive flooding at Garah, and Tycannah Ck to the south, which had record gauge heights.  This local runoff contributed to the high flooding at Pallamallawa and Moree.  There was also extensive local flooding west of Moree due to the local rainfall, reported as 225-300mm (shows on satellite images in earlier posting).

 ·         Yarraman flow volumes (indicator of flooding in wetlands of Gingham and Lower Gwydir ).  The volume which passed Yarraman up to Wednesday 30^th reached approximately 245,000 Ml.  This volume has been exceeded 10 times in the last 60 years and is estimated to be about a 25% AEP (4-5 year ARI) event.  With extensive local flooding in the wetlands, the flood is likely to spread widely throughout the wetland areas. 

·         Flows at gauging stations – the attached excel spreadsheet (put together by Jane Humphries for Riverbank section) shows all flows at gaugings stations throughout the valley since Tuesday 22^nd November covering this flood event.