NLWRA

Water (General)

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 Story

A classroom exercise for teachers of primary and lower secondary  Materials  A Large Transparent (Glass) Aquarium or similar container 30 ( Minimum 24) small film cannisters Various materials to represent pollution as outlined in the list attached Two large glasses Paper towels, filters, scoops, strainers, milk cartons with soil to ensure correct disposal of polluted water and (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)...

Addressing Indigenous Cultural Values in Water Allocation Planning

Water allocation processes across tropical Australia are struggling with the question of how to acknowledge and protect Aboriginal values and interests in water-dependent ecosystems. Indigenous interests in environmental flows research and water resource policy have tended to be neglected; consequently Aboriginal people have rarely participated equitably in water management decision-making. This project examined international sociological approaches to environmental flow assessment and water management (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)...

Murrumbidgee Wetland Seedbank Research Project

Preliminary report

The majority of wetlands along the Murrumbidgee are owned privately, yet little is known about these wetlands and there is evidence they are in poor ecological condition (Spencer et. al. 1998). This project was aimed at discovering the nature of the plant communities within wetlands on private land on the Murrumbidgee River. At the commencement of the project the region was in the midst of a drought, meaning vegetation surveys would not have been fruitful. A soil seedbank study was conducted instead. (more)...

Survey of soil seed bank of Murrumbidgee floodplain wetlands

Wetland resiliency depends on maintaining good wetland health. A healthy and diverse wetland seed bank is vital for maintaining wetland resiliency. Resiliency is promoted through good wetland management, such as controlling stock access to wetlands. However landholders are often reluctant to fence wetlands to control stock, because they perceive the fenced area as a source of weeds that will become uncontrollable and invade other parts of their property. To establish if weeds in (more)...

Water Quality History of Murrumbidgee River Floodplain Wetlands

The condition of floodplain wetlands is a function of internal and external forces and functions. Wetlands vary longitudinally down a floodplain following principals enshrined in the River Continuum Concept whereby the nature and concentration of solutes and sediments change with distance from source. This observation pertains directly to the main river channels but influences the wetland mostly in times of flood as,during low flow,connection between the river and the wetland may be severed. (more)...

Knowledge Seeking Strategies of Natural Resource Professionals

Workshop Synthesis

The degradation of natural resources in Australia has been causing widespread community and political concern. Australia has a well regarded and sophisticated research base in natural resources and yet there is an ongoing challenge to get this knowledge used by the resource managers who could benefit from it (Vanclay & Lawrence, 1995). The CRC for Freshwater Ecology and the Rivers Consortium jointly conducted this workshop at (more)...