A new paradigm for catchment management: detection, forecasting and management of water catchments with multiple steady states. Understanding the response and recovery of Australia's water catchments to climatic change and variability is become increasingly urgent. Our catchments are vulnerable because there is a fundamental gap in our understanding of how they recover from high or low rainfall periods. This project will: a) advance water management concepts; b) build tools to understand how and ....A new paradigm for catchment management: detection, forecasting and management of water catchments with multiple steady states. Understanding the response and recovery of Australia's water catchments to climatic change and variability is become increasingly urgent. Our catchments are vulnerable because there is a fundamental gap in our understanding of how they recover from high or low rainfall periods. This project will: a) advance water management concepts; b) build tools to understand how and when catchments might switch to new states when hit by a disturbance; and c) identify how best to build the buffering capacity to reduce the chance of a switch occurring. The project will make Australia's groundwater and streamflow resources more secure and make Australian researchers and water resource managers world leaders in the emerging science of catchment resilience.Read moreRead less
A new method for identifying actual groundwater contributions to base flow using both stream flow and groundwater head data. Estimating the groundwater contribution to river flow is difficult but critical for managing water resources and protecting stream environments. This project will deliver better methods for estimating these contributions using existing stream flow and groundwater data.
Predicting water quality at the catchment scale: learning from two decades of monitoring. Poor water quality affects many rivers and receiving waters such as the Great Barrier Reef and Gippsland Lakes. This project aims to use Bayesian hierarchical models of statewide water quality data to quantify the effects of a range of factors on stream water quality including climate, land use, river flow, vegetation cover, etcetera. The analysis intends to extract information from the entire data set rath ....Predicting water quality at the catchment scale: learning from two decades of monitoring. Poor water quality affects many rivers and receiving waters such as the Great Barrier Reef and Gippsland Lakes. This project aims to use Bayesian hierarchical models of statewide water quality data to quantify the effects of a range of factors on stream water quality including climate, land use, river flow, vegetation cover, etcetera. The analysis intends to extract information from the entire data set rather than concentrating on individual sites. It intends to underpin a new predictive capacity including response to land use and management changes and climatic variations based on long-term data sets, as well as a water quality prediction capability. It is intended that the models developed will jointly model a range of inter-related water quality parameters.Read moreRead less
Automated groundwater level mapping: a tool for catchment scale estimation of aquifer storage changes, fluxes and hydrogeological properties. Cutting-edge groundwater mapping tools will be developed by this project and made freely available. Water table maps will be derived for Victoria and used to quantify aquifer properties, recharge and the groundwater balance. Fundamental limitations to quantitative groundwater management will be overcome and the Bureau of Meteorology intend to adopt the fin ....Automated groundwater level mapping: a tool for catchment scale estimation of aquifer storage changes, fluxes and hydrogeological properties. Cutting-edge groundwater mapping tools will be developed by this project and made freely available. Water table maps will be derived for Victoria and used to quantify aquifer properties, recharge and the groundwater balance. Fundamental limitations to quantitative groundwater management will be overcome and the Bureau of Meteorology intend to adopt the findings.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE130100159
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$160,000.00
Summary
Mobile Australian field isotope alliance. This project will enable a quantum leap in capacity to undertake, real-time, field-based studies of environmental processes using the natural isotope tracers of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. This will enable the project to address a range of fundamental research questions in climate change, water resources, ecology and human impact in tropical Australia.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220100852
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$455,766.00
Summary
Breathing streams: integrating aquatic emissions into carbon budgets. This project aims to determine the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by small streams across the Australian tropics, a potential hotspot for emissions of carbon dioxide and methane. The project expects to investigate the controls on gaseous emissions from stream to regional scales using a novel combination of gas tracer experiments, remote sensing techniques and machine learning algorithms. Expected outcomes include the devel ....Breathing streams: integrating aquatic emissions into carbon budgets. This project aims to determine the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by small streams across the Australian tropics, a potential hotspot for emissions of carbon dioxide and methane. The project expects to investigate the controls on gaseous emissions from stream to regional scales using a novel combination of gas tracer experiments, remote sensing techniques and machine learning algorithms. Expected outcomes include the development of a predictive model of gas exchange and the first estimate of gaseous emissions from the Australian tropics. This should provide significant benefits such as reducing uncertainties on the national carbon budget and avoiding misalignment of greenhouse gas abatement policies.Read moreRead less
Resilience in biogeochemical pathways along a catchment-to-coast continuum. Aquatic systems have degraded more in the past 50 years than any other time in history. Global pressures are further threatening their sustainability, but their complexity makes it difficult to understand how they are responding. This project will combine numerous state-of-the-art approaches to unravel pathways that shape their response.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE150100302
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$357,170.00
Summary
Predicting groundwater replenishment in arid catchments. Australia is the world's driest continent, and reliant on groundwater for survival and livelihood. A clear understanding of how our groundwater is replenished is therefore imperative. Groundwater recharge is difficult to quantify because it occurs as infiltration beneath streambeds in response to rain events. This project aims to combine field data from fibre optic temperature sensing, radio-isotopes, and remote sensing into streamflow and ....Predicting groundwater replenishment in arid catchments. Australia is the world's driest continent, and reliant on groundwater for survival and livelihood. A clear understanding of how our groundwater is replenished is therefore imperative. Groundwater recharge is difficult to quantify because it occurs as infiltration beneath streambeds in response to rain events. This project aims to combine field data from fibre optic temperature sensing, radio-isotopes, and remote sensing into streamflow and catchment scale models to characterise connections between infiltration and recharge in an Australian catchment. The project aims to produce easily applicable tools to predict aquifer replenishment after storm events and predictions of groundwater availability under future climate conditions.Read moreRead less
The role of turbulence in transporting waterborne material within streambed sediments and across the sediment-water interface. The sediments of rivers, lakes and coastal ocean filter waterborne contaminants. This project uses novel experimental techniques to investigate the role of turbulence in transporting contaminants between water and boundary sediments. This project will inform better management of waterborne contaminants with benefits for human and ecosystem health.
Hydrogeological drivers and fate of spring flow in a semi-arid setting. In arid and semi-arid climates, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems often rely on groundwater springs. Spring hydrology depends on complex relationships between underlying aquifers and surface conditions, leading to high uncertainties in understanding aquifer-spring-wetland hydrology, which is critical for spring ecosystem protection and to inform management of relevant groundwater-affecting activities. This project will appl ....Hydrogeological drivers and fate of spring flow in a semi-arid setting. In arid and semi-arid climates, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems often rely on groundwater springs. Spring hydrology depends on complex relationships between underlying aquifers and surface conditions, leading to high uncertainties in understanding aquifer-spring-wetland hydrology, which is critical for spring ecosystem protection and to inform management of relevant groundwater-affecting activities. This project will apply novel hydrogeophysical and hydrochemical methods, and computer modelling, to investigate the source aquifer of, and fate of discharge from the Doongmabulla Springs Complex (DSC), located in an area of future development. Project results will inform spring vulnerability to development pressures and climate effects.Read moreRead less