Final Report

Use of Reclaimed Effluent Water in Australian Horticulture

This project was established to determine the key drivers, barriers and knowledge gaps to the use of recycled water in Australian horticulture, and address these barriers through targeted research, development and extension activities.

The Impact of Groundwater Use on Australia

The Impact of Groundwater Use on Australia’s Rivers is the outcome of a year-long Land & Water Australia Senior Research Fellowship by Dr Richard Evans.

This report presents the technical understanding of the effects of groundwater pumping on stream fl

The Impact of Groundwater Use on Australia

Groundwater and surface water resources are often closely linked. This has particular implications for Australia and how we manage our water. As a result of this connectivity it is possible to allocate the same resource twice, to surface water users and to groundwater users. This double allocation of the same water has reduced the flow in our rivers and streams. There has never been a nationwide review of surface water and groundwater interaction in Australia and consequently the extent of (more)...

Improved vegetation planning for rural landscapes

This project uses Landscape Function Analysis to evaluate the performance of two existing approaches to vegetation planning: the Focal Species Approach and Thresholds Approach. The Focal Species Approach is being applied in parts of Western Australia, New South Wales, and the Australian Capital Territory, and is used to identify the minimum amount of habitat required to support local populations of all resident fauna species. The Thresholds Approach is most relevant to grazed (more)...

Irrigation Futures of the Goulburn Broken Catchment

This fact sheet outlines the aims, processes and outputs of the project. It illustrates how Irrigation Futures is informing key agencies as they plan for future uncertainty in this important industry and region.

Salinity impact on Lower Murray horticulture

The project was developed to test the hypothesis: ‘a depressed leaching efficiency (LE) in the Lower Murray irrigation districts raises the root zone salinity and, improved water use efficiency (WUE) has an upper limit determined by that field’s LE and its variance’. The specific objectives were to: Determine/update the salinity relationships for irrigated horticulture along the Lower (more)...

Real-time monitoring and control of on-farm surface irrigation systems

This report outlines the work undertaken in project UME12. It is the final project report and covers all the work completed as part of the project. The heart of the report is section 7, it draws together all topics and field work completed as part of the project, and is probably where a reader familiar with the industry, or project, should begin. If further details are required on any topics then other sections can be referred to.

The Significance of Night Time Evaporation from Irrigation Farm Dams Across Australia

This report documents the numerical analysis performed for the Land and Water Australia (LWA) National Program for Sustainable Irrigation project "The significance of night time evaporation from irrigation farm dams” under contract UWA45. The objective of the present study is to further develop the numerical model DYRESM to make it applicable to irrigation farm dams and to subsequently apply it to gain (more)...

Natural resource buybacks and their use to secure environmental flows

Governments have committed to investigating the use of market based instruments such as ‘buybacks’ to source water for environmental needs. Buybacks are common in some natural resource sectors and have been used in the water sector as well. However, there is limited experience or research in Australia to investigate how buybacks could be structured. There has been little focus to date on alternatives to the outright purchase of entitlements, such as the buying of ‘partial’ (more)...

Sourcebook for social and economic surveys

The National Land & Water Resources Audit has commissioned this report to enable expertise in designing and implementing social and economic surveys for natural resource management (NRM) to be drawn together for the benefit of regional bodies, industry and government policy officers. This document outlines the steps involved in conducting a survey. It aims to provide regional bodies, industry and government policy officers with (more)...