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Critical thresholds (tipping points) and climate change impacts/adaptation in horticulture

Project aims to determine critical temperature thresholds of significance to key horticultural crops, how climate change will impact on these commodities and regions, and suggest adaptation options for specific commodities and regions.

Improving Seasonal Forecasts for South-West WA

The project is designed to increase the accuracy and value of climate forecasts for the wheat-sheep belt of WA by exploring the use and further developing coupled climate models.

Integration of climate-related decision support system tools to improve their relevance

The project objective is to undertake a critical evaluation of climate risk management tools such as Yield Prophet, PYCal, WhopperCropper, the Mallee calculator and CropMate to provide a more integrated package to grain growers and suggest the key investment opportunities for further improvements in these Grains Tools.

Irrigation Futures for the Murray

The Murray Darling Basin (MDB) irrigation sector is facing several issues including over-allocation, droughts, decreased water supply and changed reliability of water. This project aims to engage with key stakeholders/policy makers to get them to identify a few of the key policy questions regarding water trading, carry-over rules and spatial optimisation under different flow regimes (historic, dry, medium and wet) and identify relevant policy mechanisms critical for a (more)...

Ecohydrological regionalisation of Australia: a tool for management and science

Fact sheet

Human activities, such as land use and water extraction, and projected global climate change can lead to hydrological changes in rivers and streams. These changes are at the forefront of the many processes that threaten aquatic habitats and the flora and fauna (including humans) which depend on them.

Dynamics of sediment and nutrient fluxes from burnt forest catchments

Final Report for Land and Water Australia Project DSE1, and Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment Project

The magnitude of the impact of wildfire on water quality in SE Australia has rarely been estimated because the location and timing of wildfires is unpredictable, usually precluding the establishment of robust before and after impact experimental designs.  However the 2003 Alpine fires presented a rare opportunity to overcome this constraint when two long-term water quality research catchments were burnt by wildfire. The combination of a sound experimental design and (more)...

Farming in the dry

During the last 12 years large tracts of southern and eastern Australia have experienced a sustained dry period. The last 7 years has been more severe than the previous years. At Birchip in north western Victoria where I come from for example, our growing season rainfall has been 38% less than average over the last seven years and 28% less over the last twelve years. Interestingly our growing season rainfall over the previous twelve years from 1985 to 1996 was 20% above average.

Improving Seasonal forecasts for SWWA

More than half of the variation in gross margins in wheat cropping in south-west Western Australia (SWWA) can be explained by growing season rainfall variability (May to October). Forecasting seasonal rainfall should therefore enable the adjustment of management practices to maximise returns from ‘good’ seasons and minimise losses from ‘bad’ seasons. Growing season rainfall forecasts from Australia’s seasonal climate forecast model POAMA 1.5 (more)...

From synoptics to climate change

Model predictions of climate variability and climate change emerge as variability and trends in the average behaviour of the model weather systems. Therefore, climate models must be able to represent weather processes accurately. If a model gets the right rainfall for the wrong reasons, this casts doubt on rainfall projections. The most important weather system associated with rainfall in south-east Australia is the cut-off low. A case study shows the complexity of moisture pathways (more)...

Remote drivers of rainfall variability in Australia

This work identifies and documents a suite of large-scale drivers of rainfall variability in the Australian region. The key driver in terms of broad influence and impact on rainfall is the ElNiño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). ENSO is related to rainfall over much of the continent at different times, particularly in the north and east with the regions of influence shifting with the seasons. The Indian Ocean Dipole (more)...