Reverting coastal acid sulfate soils to wetlands: Biogeochemical processes and environmental benefits. Reverting acid sulfate soils to wetlands offers an economically viable alternative management opportunity to lock up acidity, metals and nutrients to protect our rivers and estuaries. This study will re-establish a salt water and fresh water wetland in a severely degraded acid sulfate soil area and monitor the biogeochemistry to assess how well wetlands can reduce acid sulfate soil impacts. T ....Reverting coastal acid sulfate soils to wetlands: Biogeochemical processes and environmental benefits. Reverting acid sulfate soils to wetlands offers an economically viable alternative management opportunity to lock up acidity, metals and nutrients to protect our rivers and estuaries. This study will re-establish a salt water and fresh water wetland in a severely degraded acid sulfate soil area and monitor the biogeochemistry to assess how well wetlands can reduce acid sulfate soil impacts. The systematic and detailed investigation being proposed will greatly advance the national and international understanding of how acid sulfate soils can be managed to protect our precious coastal floodplain soils and water resources.Read moreRead less
Do terrestrial processes intensify Australian droughts ? Australia's agricultural productivity is strongly affected by climate, climate variability and climate change. Recent climate changes in Western Australia forced adaptation strategies costing $500 million while the anomalously intense 2002 Murray-Darling Basin drought significantly affected agriculture. Any further intensification of droughts would affect Australia's rural economy. This proposal will assess the role of terrestrial processe ....Do terrestrial processes intensify Australian droughts ? Australia's agricultural productivity is strongly affected by climate, climate variability and climate change. Recent climate changes in Western Australia forced adaptation strategies costing $500 million while the anomalously intense 2002 Murray-Darling Basin drought significantly affected agriculture. Any further intensification of droughts would affect Australia's rural economy. This proposal will assess the role of terrestrial processes, linked to increasing CO2, in causing the drought intensification and declines in rainfall. This will provide knowledge that will guide the development of future environmental management strategies.Read moreRead less
Characterizing the hydrological cycle using water isotopes, land-surface models and satellite observations. Water is our most precious natural resource. In Australia, it is also our most precarious. The hydrological cycle describes the movement of water between the ocean, atmosphere and land. Understanding the effect and impact that a changing climate might have on the hydrological cycle is critical to securing Australia's water resources. To address these challenges, we must improve our basic u ....Characterizing the hydrological cycle using water isotopes, land-surface models and satellite observations. Water is our most precious natural resource. In Australia, it is also our most precarious. The hydrological cycle describes the movement of water between the ocean, atmosphere and land. Understanding the effect and impact that a changing climate might have on the hydrological cycle is critical to securing Australia's water resources. To address these challenges, we must improve our basic understanding of the water exchange processes within the Earth system. Our project will exploit new technology in ground and space based observation, combined with advanced modeling and measurement capabilities, to develop an improved understanding and characterization of Australian hydrological cycles and aid in assessing climate change related impacts. Read moreRead less
A Bayesian Hierarchical Approach for Simulating Multi-time Scale Hydrological Variability for Water Resource Planning. Assessments of future drought risks are dependent on simulations of hydrological inputs provided by stochastic models. The current models are limited to simulating variability at a single time scale using only local observed hydrological data. This data has only limited information on the long-term climate variability which is the cause of long-term severe droughts. The proposed ....A Bayesian Hierarchical Approach for Simulating Multi-time Scale Hydrological Variability for Water Resource Planning. Assessments of future drought risks are dependent on simulations of hydrological inputs provided by stochastic models. The current models are limited to simulating variability at a single time scale using only local observed hydrological data. This data has only limited information on the long-term climate variability which is the cause of long-term severe droughts. The proposed research will develop a new Bayesian framework for simulating multi-time scale variability in hydrological data. This will enable the dynamic processes which simulate long-term variability to be identified using auxiliary information in an uncertainty framework. This will provide water resource planners with more accurate assessments of long-term drought risks.
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Vulnerability of the Murray-Darling basin hydrometeorology to human modification. The Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) provides 40 per cent of Australia's agricultural production. Some 1,500,000 hectares use irrigation for agriculture and year-to-year variations in productivity highlights a basin that is vulnerable to changes resulting from human activity. This proposal builds an integrated modelling system of the MDB to understand its hydrology and meteorology in the context of human modification to ....Vulnerability of the Murray-Darling basin hydrometeorology to human modification. The Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) provides 40 per cent of Australia's agricultural production. Some 1,500,000 hectares use irrigation for agriculture and year-to-year variations in productivity highlights a basin that is vulnerable to changes resulting from human activity. This proposal builds an integrated modelling system of the MDB to understand its hydrology and meteorology in the context of human modification to climate and to land use in the basin. The improved understanding of the MDB will allow science-aware policy developments that reduce the vulnerability of agriculture and water resources within the basin to future changes caused through human activity.Read moreRead less
Integrated assessment of climate change, climate input errors and land-use change on soil-moisture and carbon-balance in a catchment simulation framework. Assessing soil moisture and carbon balance changes in a warmer climate is important for land-use and agricultural planning. A decision support tool is proposed that performs the assessment and allows us to develop plans that reduce adverse impacts. The tool consists of three parts. The first part models changes in rainfall accuracy to calibrat ....Integrated assessment of climate change, climate input errors and land-use change on soil-moisture and carbon-balance in a catchment simulation framework. Assessing soil moisture and carbon balance changes in a warmer climate is important for land-use and agricultural planning. A decision support tool is proposed that performs the assessment and allows us to develop plans that reduce adverse impacts. The tool consists of three parts. The first part models changes in rainfall accuracy to calibrate approaches for catchment simulation. The second part simulates rainfall under climate change conditions using stochastic downscaling. The third part simulates future soil moisture and carbon balance using downscaled climate inputs. The end result is a probabilistic simulation of the catchment hydrology under future climates.Read moreRead less