View of the Basin

Basinview from October 2021 clearly shows water in Menindee Lakes.

Basin bird's eye view

BasinView provides a monthly bird’s eye view of the entire Murray–Darling Basin. BasinView is a Google Earth engine-based viewing tool that allows you to explore the 1 million square kilometres of the Basin using a collection of images captured via satellite during the previous month. It is produced by combining publicly available European Space Agency Sentinel-2 satellite imagery taken during the previous calendar month into one summary (median) image. The tool allows you to see how the landscape looked during that month, with the ability to zoom and pan around the landscape down to a 10-metre height.

Viewers can switch various layers on and off to investigate the Basin in different ways including:

• Natural colour (red, green, blue) – shows what the human eye sees
• Water presence (modified normalised difference water index) – highlights open water and wet ground
• Vegetation greenness (normalised difference vegetation index) – showing where vegetation is and how green it is
• Catchment outline – shows where the different catchments of the Basin are located

The summary image removes most clouds during the process to combine the month’s images, so viewers are treated to a clear view. 

We collect GIS and satellite imagery data to assist with landscape condition monitoring and  monitoring and communicating how the Basin Plan is being implemented. For more information about the collection and storage of information by the MDBA, see our Privacy Collection Notice for Geospatial satellite images.