ABSTRACT:

The resources provided here were used to calculate catchment-scale nutrient budgets conducted for two catchments in south east Australia, the high-rainfall Moe Drain catchment, and the predominantly irrigated Lake Wellington Main Drain catchment. The resources provided here include farm-gate nutrient budgets for a collection of dairy farms (annually (July-June) between financial years 2015-16 and 2020-20), and livestock farms (financial years 2019-20 and 2020-21). Farm-gate budgets were calculated using publicly available farm survey information for the Gippsland region of Victoria (collected by the Victorian Government Dairy Farm and Livestock Farm Monitor Projects), or previously published data pertaining relating to vegetable crops. Flow, total nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations, as well as estimated monthly nitrogen and phosphorus fluxes are also provided, in additional to data summarising the distribution of land use classes in each catchment. Each folder contains a README file with additional metadata specific to each record. This dataset forms the basis of the following publication: Sargent, R., Wong, W. W., Western, A. W., Cook, P., & Lintern, A. (2025). Surplus nutrient exports differ between irrigated and high-rainfall agricultural catchments: A tale of two catchments in south east Australia. Journal of Hydrology, 133959. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2025.133959