Final Report

A framework for assessing the health of coastal waters: Qld trial

While the assessment framework and indicators described in this report are for use by a range of stakeholders from community to state government, the report is specifically written for the NLWRA (as a final report on a project to trial the national set of 19 estuarine, coastal and marine resource condition indicators in Queensland). As such it contains information and data that is in excess of the needs of the intended users. The purpose of the indicators provided (more)...

Regional integrated catchment condition reporting - final report (June 2007)

This project was designed to develop the tools and define a process required for reporting on regional scale catchment condition. The conceptual framework for reporting at the regional scale is the same as was used in the scoping study for the National Assessment of Catchment Condition (Chesson and Kingham 2005). This allowed for the efficient development of the framework, resulting in a consistent approach and reporting mechanism across scales.

Breaking through the equity barrier in environmental policy

Environmental and natural resource policy has nowadays come under the banner of increased economic efficiency, as witnessed by the growing popularity of market-based instruments. While few argue against the need for efficiency, there are worries that othe

A Review of Geophysical Equipment applied to Groundwater and Soil Investigation

Using the 2004 ANCID/Sustainable Irrigation Travel Fellowship, David Allen conducted an international survey of over 100 geophysical instruments applicable to irrigation problems. After attending the Symposium on Application of Geophysics to Engineering and Environmental Problems in Atlanta, Georgia, USA he visited equipment manufacturers and researchers in Canada, Denmark and Sweden. The survey of equipment details and prices is to be (more)...

LongStop

The FullStop Wetting Front Detector was designed to be a simple, inexpensive and robust device that gives a yes/no response to whether a wetting front has reached a particular depth. When searching for simplicity and low cost, tradeoffs need to be made with sensitivity; in the case of FullStop the decision was made to detect a 2 kPa strength wetting front. From a theoretical perspective, the FullStop Wetting Front Detector is not well suited to furrow irrigation, deep placement, cracking (more)...

Implications of water reforms for the national economy

From humble beginings in the 1880s by individual farmers along inland rivers and, in particular, the efforts of the Chaffey brothers at Renmark and Mildura in 1887, the irrigation industries in Australia have expanded to where they now use three quarters of all water used, have a combined area of about 2.6 million hectares under irrigation and produce agricultural outputs worth over $9 billion. Irrigation industries are an integral part of many regional economies and the national economy, and, on one (more)...

Changing Irrigation Systems and Management in the Harvey Irrigation Area

The Harvey Water Irrigation Area (HWIA) is Western Australia’s prime irrigated dairying area supplying Perth and the south west with more than 40 per cent of its milk. Irrigated agriculture commenced in Harvey with the establishment of a weir in 1916. Since that time, pastures have been watered through surface irrigation of paddocks which over time have been leveled and divided into irrigation bays. When this project was envisaged in 2001, there were no centre (more)...

Knowledge Management in Cotton and Grain Irrigation

The Australian Cotton Cooperative Research Centre through this knowledge management project aimed to develop a better understanding of the knowledge pathways being used by irrigated cotton and grain growers, consultants and support agencies.

The current study focused on how cotton and grain irrigators and their consultants access information about irrigation and generate knowledge to make better irrigation decisions.

Report of Stakeholder consultations in Western Australia

Seasonal climate forecast tools and information on the internet

This report summarises Econnect Communication’s user needs analysis of seasonal forecast tools and information on the internet conducted for Managing Climate Variability, in close liaison with the Bureau of Meteorology. Econnect Communication started by interviewing 12 industry visionaries from across Australia, representing agriculture and natural resource management, then surveyed farmers, advisors, and regional natural resource management bodies.