Flows and aquatic plants: an historical and experimental approach

This project aims to improve understanding of the conceptual basis for the connections between flow and environmental benefits and suggest potential ecological indicators of environmental flows.

The project will test whether aquatic plants, like reeds, mosses and algae, can be used to demonstrate the benefits of environmental flow allocations. In doing so, it will use a new approach for examining pre-existing data to review the hypotheses behind ecological benefits from environmental flows and set new benchmarks for evidence of such effects. The project will then test some general, ecological, hypotheses in the field that will be applicable to systems beyond those of the specific experimental sites.

Expected project completion date: October 2011

Outcomes

1. To examine, using historical records, the relations between flow and aquatic plant distribution in southeastern Australia.
2. Based on these relations, to devise hypotheses for predicting the effect of flow reduction, through water extraction or damming, on aquatic plant distribution
3. Similarly, to devise hypotheses for predicting the effect on stressed rivers or wetlands where flow is to be increased through an environmental allocation
4. To carry out experimental tests of these hypotheses in rivers or wetlands where environmental water allocations are planned, and hence to determine the extent that a river can be regulated before the altered flow and flooding regime starts to impact on aquatic vegetation
5. To determine the hydrologic parameters of greatest importance for regeneration of aquatic plants, be they indigenous or non-indigenous
6. To determine the optimum, and the range of, hydrologic conditions required by the dominant aquatic plant species for successful regeneration

Publications and Resources

None listed

Citation

Land & Water Australia. 2009. Flows and aquatic plants: an historical and experimental approach . [Online] (Updated July 31st, 2009)
Available at: http://lwa.gov.au/node/3217 [Accessed Tuesday 26th of April 2011 01:42:42 AM ].