Final Report

Regional Natural Resource Management: A Stocktake of Land & Water Australia’s Investments

This report presents a strategic framework as a lens for examining the current collection of research on regional NRM from across Land & Water Australia’s (LWA) program portfolios, and for making recommendations on future directions and priorities for research investment. Specific recommendations are made on the basis of research findings from a sample of past investment, as well as from input from several members of (more)...

Adaptive Agriculture: A Stocktake of Land & Water Australia’s Investments

This ‘stocktake’ is really about sustainable agriculture, of which adaptive agriculture is one important element. Agriculture cannot be sustainable if it does not adapt to the threats and opportunities constantly facing it. Adaptive agriculture may therefore be seen as the means of producing food and fibre in ways that remain dynamic, vibrant, flexible and constantly responding to the natural environment and the operating environment of the market.

Sustainability of freshwater lenses under major rivers

The main outcome of this research is the discovery that these lenses have continued to form even under the regulated river conditions of the last century. However, high river levels promote lens formation, and the lack of high river levels is limiting the ongoing formation of these lenses. Pumping groundwater from these lenses, especially in these low-river-level periods is detrimental to the longevity of these lenses and the buffering role that they play, preventing regional saline (more)...

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)...

Assessment of Information Needs for Freshwater Flows into Australian Estuaries

This report was jointly commissioned by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and Land & Water Australia to assess the information needs for freshwater flows into estuaries. This report is based on the results of a desk study together with the outputs from an expert workshop. It has the following objectives: create a logical framework showing the potential links between freshwater inflows and (more)...

Impacts of Groundwater Affecting Activities on Baseflow Variability and Ecological Response

Improving Integration in NRM

Researchers and practitioners in natural resource management (NRM) are faced with multi-faceted knowledge integration considerations. This project analysed integrative concepts and methods from NRM, environmental science, public health, technology and security. It focused on two classes of integration methods - dialogue-based and common metrics-based. The findings are presented as a monograph on dialogue-based methods and a paper on common (more)...

Healthy Catchments through Detection and Remediation of Contaminants with Novel Technologies

Final report on the one year project which critically tested two novel technologies for contaminant detection and treatment in catchment water contaminated by agricultural chemicals. The project brings together RMIT’s expertise (polymer compositions suitable for fungicide iprodione sensing in real ground and run-off water) and Victorian DPI expertise (analytical support and samples) to develop a chemical detection device made of a polymer. The (more)...

The Bayesian Network Models for Environmental Flow Decision-making

This final report summerises the activities and outcomes of the Land & Water Australia Project - Environmental Flow Bayesian Network Decision-Making Framework. The development of two Bayesian Network models used as a decision-support tool for determining environmental flows in major rivers in Australia are reported on. The first eFlows BN model was for the Latrobe River in Victoria, a river system that is highly regulated and (more)...