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National Rivers Consortium

Protection of Rivers, River Reaches, and Estuaries of High Conservation Value

The objectives of this project whose principle investigator was Professor Richard Kingsford were to develop broad, Australia-wide support for: A coordinated and national approach to protecting and managing rivers, river reaches and estuaries. A sharing of management and protection strategies and concepts so all States and Territories can learn from each other as they implement various protection measures and invest in protective management actions. (more)...

Predicting salinity induced loss of biodiversity

The objectives for this project were to develop and test a management tool to predict the loss of instream fauna biodiversity (micro-, macro- invertebrates and fish) due to changes in salinity. Extensive experimental data were collected from the southern Murray Darling Basin (MDB) with proof-testing in the northern MDB and Tropical Australia to see whether the results transfered across Australia. The effect of salinity in combination with changes in (more)...

Algal availability of phosphorus discharged from different catchment sources

Algal Management Strategies, Nutrient Management Strategies and Catchment Management Plans frequently have as a major focus the reduction of phosphorus loads to surface waters. The expressed intention of the nutrient control is to reduce the frequency and intensity of algal blooms, particularly blooms of toxic cyanobacteria. In many instances a direct link between the magnitude of algal blooms and phosphorus loads has not been demonstrated. However, there is appreciable information in the scientific (more)...

Sources and Delivery of Suspended Sediment and Phosphorus to Australian Rivers

“Combining tracers and landscape modelling to predict sediment and phosphorus from different landuses and erosion processes.” Sedimentation in streams and rivers draining agricultural land has resulted in severe environmental degradation. Eutrophication is a major associated issue, and the persistent occurrence of algal blooms has been linked with excess available P. The total amount of P in these systems has been shown to be dominated by the sediment bound load derived from erosion (more)...

Sources and delivery of suspended sediment and phosphorus to Australian rivers

“Combining tracers and landscape modelling to predict sediment and phosphorus from different landuses and erosion processes” Sedimentation in streams and rivers draining agricultural land has resulted in severe environmental degradation. Eutrophication is a major associated issue, and the persistent occurrence of algal blooms has been linked with excess available P. The total amount of P in these systems has been shown to be dominated by the sediment bound load derived from erosion of (more)...

Catchment assessment techniques to help determine priorities in river restoration

The intent is for the assessment techniques described to provide an improved rational basis for setting stream rehabilitation priorities. Focus catchments were chosen that had issues aligned with those in the project objectives. Two existing assessment techniques; SedNet (Prosser et al., 2001) and RARC (Jansen et al., 2004a), were selected to be developed for regional scale priority setting, based on the project team’s expertise with these techniques. These techniques were (more)...

Catchment assessment techniques to help determine priorities in river restoration

The intent is for the assessment techniques described to provide an improved rational basis for setting stream rehabilitation priorities. Focus catchments were chosen that had issues aligned with those in the project objectives. Two existing assessment techniques; SedNet (Prosser et al., 2001) and RARC (Jansen et al., 2004a), were selected to be developed for regional scale priority setting, based on the project team’s expertise with these techniques. These techniques (more)...

Hydrological effects of floodgate management on coastal floodplain agriculture

Extensive drainage systems have been constructed on coastal floodplains to mitigate the effects of floods and to enable the development of agricultural industries. They have also greatly increased the rate of acidity entering creeks and estuaries from acid sulfate soils, resulted in a loss of fish breeding habitats and led to changes in the vegetation composition of backswamps. Coastal drains usually have floodgates which prevent tidal inundation of backswamps and reduce the ingress of saline water (more)...

SIGNAL scoring system for river bio-assessment by community groups

SIGNAL stands for ‘Stream Invertebrate Grade Number – Average Level.’ It is a simple scoring system for macro-invertebrate (‘water bug’) samples from Australian rivers. A SIGNAL score gives an indication of water quality in the river from which the sample was collected. Rivers with high SIGNAL scores are likely to have low levels of salinity, turbidity and nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. They (more)...

SIGNAL scoring system for river bio-assessment by community groups

SIGNAL stands for ‘Stream Invertebrate Grade Number – Average Level.’ It is a simple scoring system for macro-invertebrate (‘water bug’) samples from Australian rivers. A SIGNAL score gives an indication of water quality in the river from which the sample was collected. Rivers with high SIGNAL scores are likely to have low levels of salinity, turbidity and nutrients such as nitrogen (more)...