Associate Professor George Ganff, from the University of Adelaide studied the rivers of northern Australia and particularly those in the Top End of the Northern Territory which are subject to major seasonal changes in flow and inter-annual variability. During the dry season, spring water maintains flow with different water chemistry from the rainfall run-off that constitutes wet season flow.
“Domestic and feral herbivores need daily access to water during summer, and every few days during winter. The risk to biodiversity and ecosystem function depends on the type of herbivore activity, its intensity, and how long an area is exposed to grazing and seasonal conditions (rainfall). We explore whether waterpoint manipulation is a useful management tool for achieving biodiversity and ecosystem outcomes in the arid grazing lands of remote Australia. We used the (more)...
Under climate change conditions Australia will generally be hotter and, for many parts of the country drier.
Vegetation water use is strongly influenced by soil moisture availability (which is influenced by rainfall) and evaporative demand.
Soil moisture will be more scarce in the future across much of the continent due to declining rainfall. The major input of water into the Australian landscape is rainfall and most rainfall (70–95%) returns to the atmosphere as (more)...
The problem of sustainable water resource management is a key issue confronting Australia in the 21st century. Increasing demand through increased population size, declining rainfall across parts of temperate Australia and consequently an increasing need to allocate water to maintain ecosystem health and ecosystem service provision are the dominant threats to the maintenance of an adequate supply of water to urban, peri-urban and rural communities.
Managing root-zone salinity for irrigated horticultural crops in winter rainfall zones of Australia
A better understanding of plant requirements and the highly efficient management of water has led irrigators to apply water to accurately meet crop needs. This has meant a considerable reduction in the amount of water flushing through the root-zone. As a result, soil salinity levels have risen. Current drought conditions and low water allocations are likely to result in even less water being used to flush salts from the root-zone. The declining quality of water resources means that actively removing (more)...
Farming in the first decade of the 21st century in Australia is as challenging now as it was 100 years ago, but the grab-bag of tools that help farmers manage for drought and flood is growing.
South Australian wool, wheat and barley growers Susan and Ben Carn are making the most of these tools. They farm 8000 hectares running 4000 to 5000 sheep in a low rainfall area at Quorn, north of the infamous Goyder’s Line of Rainfall, the demarcation established in 1865 above which anything (more)...
A key issue identified by the research community working with the cotton industry was the lack of understanding and acceptance of the concept of deep drainage. Deep drainage is defined as the part of the water (applied to the surface and as rainfall or irrigation) that moves past the rootzone. In general the existing paradigm was “cotton soils don’t leak”. However, the research community related to the Australian Cotton CRC (ACCRC) (more)...
Professor Matthew England and his team at the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre are this year’s winners of the Land & Water Australia Eureka Prize for Water Research and Innovation.
The techniques developed by Clarke (2003) will be used to quantify and then model (eg using LEACHM & VineLOGIC) the long-term impact of irrigation with moderately saline irrigation water using a range of drip application techniques in combination with different surface soil management approaches on soil chemical & physical properties, plant physiological performance and wine grape quality through wine and (more)...
