A framework to provide for the assessment of environmental water requirements of groundwater dependent ecosystems <p>This&nbsp;project&nbsp;carried over from the National Rivers Consortium Program and developed management tools to help incorporate&nbsp;groundwater dependant ecosystem&nbsp;(GDE) water requirements into water allocation planning by establishing a uniform and consistent approach to the assessment of environmental water requirements.</p> <!--break--> <p>The project involved three key components:-</p> <ol> <li>Development of a GDE Assessment Toolbox - tools to help determine whether an ecosystem depends on groundwater and what the nature of the dependence might be</li> <li>Development of Operational Methodologies - ways for information gathered by the different tools in the Toolbox to be used to develop environmental water requirements for different ecosystem types</li> <li>Field investigations and trials - procedures for assessing and testing tools and methods</li> </ol> <p>This project was completed by REM, SKM and CSIRO. It was completed April 2007.</p> 2009-04-20T04:12:44Z 2009-07-30T07:30:19Z <ol> <li>Provide an update on the &quot;desktop&quot; approach to help identify potential groundwater dependent ecosystems at the catchment scale</li> <li>Review&nbsp;the more advanced techniques available to determine groundwater dependency and the current water regime for different types of groundwater dependent ecosystems</li> <li>Provide a&nbsp;framework to assess the natural water regime when it is suspected that it will be different from the current water regime</li> <li>Development of a risk assessment framework to develop robust and defensible Environmental Water Requirements (EWRs)</li> <li>Provide recommendations to help managers to develop water allocation plans that a)&nbsp;have the proper built-in mechanisms to ensure that water provisions for the environment are met, and b)&nbsp;are flexible enough to allow regular updating over time</li> </ol> REM1