Water

Flow requirements and resource delivery to the Lower Murray Lakes and Northern Coorong

As discussed in the previous milestone reports, the drawdown of water levels in the Lower Lakes to unprecedented levels has provided an additional focus for the project. This has been done to provide relevant information to the managers and assist with both the short-term and long-term management of the region. It has included investigating the changes water quality during drawdown and likely changes in water quality upon reflooding the lakes.

Developing institutional arrangements of Indigenous participation in the National Water Initiative

This Final Milestone Report and attached fact sheets have been prepared by the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA) for endorsement by Land & Water Australia (LWA).

Facilitating Strategic Engagement between Land and Water Australia, the Natural Resource Management Sector and the Agribusiness Sector

Environmental Water Allocation Forum Presentations

To download video presentation files from the forum, right-click on a link below, select "save link as" and save it to a location on your computer. You will need the Quick Time player installed on your computer to run the files. The Quick Time player can be downloaded from here.

Water allocation to River Murray wetlands: a basin-wide modeling approach

The primary aim of this project was to relate the water regime preferences of wetland plants to hydrology throughout the Murray River Basin and to predict the volume of additional water required to achieve optimal plant species diversity. This report details the methods and key findings of the project which examined the impact of regulation and changes in water allocation on the community composition of wetland plants through the Murray River basin. Due to a lack of primary data, it deals (more)...

Watering wetlands, Impediments and challenges to the transfer of knowledge between wetland managers and scientists

The degradation of Australia’s wetlands has brought into sharp focus the need to manage factors such as altered flow and water regimes. Exchanging knowledge between wetland managers and wetland scientists and putting knowledge into practice is an essential part of this management. Yet environmental watering of wetlands is a relatively new type of intervention, especially where engineering infrastructure is used. It is largely restricted to south eastern Australia. Thus, while there is (more)...

Putting Plans into Practice, Environmental Water Allocation R&D Program

The degradation of Australia’s wetlands has brought into sharp focus the need to manage factors such as altered flow and water regimes. Exchanging knowledge between wetland managers and wetland scientists and putting it into practice is an essential part of this management. Yet environmental watering of wetlands is a relatively new type of intervention, especially where engineering infrastructure is used. It is largely restricted to south eastern Australia. Thus, while there is considerable (more)...

Climate change and water use of native vegetation

Under climate change conditions Australia will generally be hotter and, for many parts of the country drier. Vegetation water use is strongly influenced by soil moisture availability (which is influenced by rainfall) and evaporative demand. Soil moisture will be more scarce in the future across much of the continent due to declining rainfall. The major input of water into the Australian landscape is rainfall and most rainfall (70–95%) returns to the atmosphere as (more)...

How much water does a woodland or plantation use: a review of some measurement methods

Determining the water balance of a landscape is important to sustainable management of water, vegetation and land resources. Water flow through vegetation is the principle pathway for the discharge of water from Australian landscapes. The rate of this discharge is determined by solar radiation, leaf area index, vapour pressure deficit and soil moisture content. Tree transpiration from plantations and native woodlands and forests is an important determinant of the water balance of much of the (more)...

Carbon Uptake and Water Use of Vegetation Under Climate Change

Accumulation and storage of carbon in trees is one method of sequestration which may help offset increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. However, for every molecule of CO2 absorbed by a leaf, up to a thousand molecules of water are released as transpiration, water that has moved out of the soil into the atmosphere. Therefore, simply planting more trees to absorb more CO2 is not as risk-free as may originally be thought, (more)...