Home

Threat assessment

SPIF - Scenario Planning and Investment Framework

SPIF is a GIS-based decision support tool designed for extension staff and NRM planners. Outputs include maps and spreadsheets with a summary of the multiple growth, carbon sequestration, biodiversity and economic benfits from different types of forest systems. Functions: - Target where to grow within a catchment or on a farm for growth and carbon sequestration; salinity reduction, reduced water impacts and biodiversity enhancement. - Assess the merits revegetation plan design and expectations, comparing multiple forestry scenarios and measuring outcomes. - Measure the growth rates and economic return from different planting designs on your property/estate. - Compare the water use / benefit tradeoffs for water, carbon, biodiversity, economics from different forestry and traditional farm enterprise*. Geographies: Data are available for SW Goulburn Broken and Corangamite CMA region in Victoria at 1 hectare (100x100m) resolution and at 1KM for the entire Australian continent after March 2008. Access: - February 2008: via web on Google Earth - Now: on CD charlie.hawkins@csiro.au (0438429280) * Subject to data availability

An Adpative Management Framework for Connected Groundwater-Surface Water Resources in Australia

This report describes a framework and toolkit designed to provide a consistent approach to conjunctive water management in Australia. The framework consists of six steps in an adaptive management cycle and provides information and resources to enable water managers and other stakeholders to take a more coordinated approach.

Water Solute and Isotope Balance

A lumped water, solute and isotope mass balance model for surface water bodies. This model can be coupled to the hydro-geo-chemical models PHREEQ*(USGS) and the high-salinity hydro-geo-chemical model PHRQPITZ (Plummer et al., USGS) to predict chemical composition of saline waters. The use of solutes and isotopes in the mass balance enables unknown components of the water balance to be found with greater reliability. Output could be used to estimate salt loads in rivers and lakes, and to determine the effects of increased salt loads from drainage on downstream lakes.

TOPOG

Predict the effect of management decisions on water, sediment, nutrient and pesticide yields with reasonable accuracy on large, ungauged river basins. TOPOG is a terrain analysis-based hydrologic modelling package. TOPOG describes how water moves through landscapes; over the land surface, into the soil, through the soil and groundwater and back to the atmosphere via evaporation. Conservative solute movement and sediment transport are also simulated.

Soil Water Infiltration and Movement (SWIM)

The overall purpose of SWIM is to provide a tool to address issues relating to the soil water and solute balance. SWIM is a point, short time-step model that simulates runoff, infiltration, redistribution, solute transport and redistribution of solutes, plant uptake and transpiration, soil evaporation, deep drainage and leaching. The overall purpose of the model is to address issues relating to the soil water and solute balance. As such it is a research tool that can be integrated in laboratory and field studies concerned with soil water and solute transport. It is also suitable for management and education.

SIMRAT-XL

SIMRAT-XL is an MS Excel implementation of the key computational algorithms from the SIMRAT Salinity IMpact Rapid Assessment Tool. It provides a rapid assessment of the salinity impacts arising from the application or removal of water on land at some distance from the aquifer discharge.

Salinity Investment Framework III (SIF3)

The SIF3 project is working with governments (national, state and local) and with regional bodies responsible for salinity investments to bridge the gap between state-of-the-art knowledge and action. SIF3 integrates hydrological, biological, economic and social research to help catchment managers understand of how best to respond to dryland salinity in different circumstances.

SERMII

SERM II focuses on the relationships between pressures, anthropogenic and natural, and estuarine state, as reflected in a range of model indicators. The results may be used both to fill in gaps in pressures or indicators in the data-based assessment, and perhaps more importantly to understand the ways in which estuaries respond to different pressures, and hence guide thinking about management responses.

SedNet

SedNet constructs sediment and nutrient (phosphorus and nitrogen) budgets for regional scale river networks (3,000 - 1,000,000 km2) to identify patterns in the material fluxes. This can assist effective targeting of catchment and river management actions at the regional scale, to improve water quality and riverine habitat.

Salt and Water Balance

The objective of this tool is to model the dynamic representation of streamflow and salinity generation processes at sub-catchment scales (1-100 sqkm). It is able to generate daily stream flows and salinities at sub-catchment scale, which can then be aggregated upwards to whole-of-catchment scale. It is likely that the model will be used for addressing management options in water resources recovery catchments in WA, in conjunction with MAGIC.