Proposed northern Australia water developments pertinent to the Northern Prawn Fishery: collation and review

Funded Activity Summary

River flow is crucial in the life cycle of a suite of estuarine and marine species important in commercial, recreational and Indigenous fisheries in northern Australia, including highly valuable commercial species and iconic recreational and Indigenous target species - banana prawns, barramundi, mudcrabs, threadfins and grunter. Interannual and seasonal cycles of flood- and low-flows sustain both the integrity of species lifecycles and of habitats on which they depend. Iconic species, such as sawfish, and supra-littoral and coastal habitats, such as salt flats, also depend on river flows. These species and habitats have conservation, cultural value and/or economic significance. Water flowing from the northern rivers supports substantial economic and social value, but water is a valuable commodity more broadly, in other sectors. Irrigated agriculture and water development infrastructure also have commitment within substantive government initiatives to develop northern Australia, exemplified by the recent report, “Our North, our future: White paper on developing Northern Australia” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2015).

Various policy outputs by State, Territory and Federal governments, and private industry, comprise a large suite of plans for northern Australia water use. It is difficult to appreciate the extent of these plans, or access detail, as there appears to be no single listing, or collation that summarises features. The current NPF high priority Research Area is “Develop an understanding of ecological and economic tradeoffs of the impact of existing and proposed water resource development in Northern Australia”. As a first step in addressing this priority, this desktop research will collate and review information on the water developments likely to be of interest to northern Australia’s fisheries, principally the Northern Prawn Fishery. Additionally the project will provide the conceptual framework for the future development of ecological modelling to enable multispecies predictions and capture higher order and system level ecological interactions.

Objectives:
1. Identify available information on planned water development in northern Australia
2. Collate the information and review these plans, providing an accessible summary
3. Identify sources of information that might be used to evaluate impacts of water development on fisheries and ecological values
4. Develop a conceptual framework for the future elaboration of ecosystem models, addressing multispecies and ecosystem-level predictions of the impacts in the estuarine and marine environments of water resource development

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-07-2016

End Date: 30-06-2017

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $50,000.00

Funder: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

There are no FoR codes available for this funding activity

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Aquaculture | Fisheries Management | Modelling | RAC CMWTH | Resource Enhancement | Risk reduction

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