Decision Making Roles and Responsibility for Environmental Water in the Murray-Darling Basin

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Horne ◽  
E O’Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Environmental Water ◽  
Murray Darling Basin

An Impossible Prescription: Why Science Cannot Determine Environmental Water Requirements for a Healthy Murray-Darling Basin

2017 ◽  
Vol 03 (03) ◽  
pp. 1650037 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha J. Capon ◽  
Timothy R. Capon
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Water Policy ◽  
Environmental Water ◽  
Management Scenarios ◽  
Water Requirements ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Murray Darling Basin ◽  
Alternative Water ◽  
Ecological Objectives ◽  
Ecological Science

The concept of environmental water requirements (EWRs) is central to Australia’s present approach to water reform. Current decision-making regarding environmental water relies strongly on the notion that EWRs necessary to meet targets associated with ecological objectives for asset sites can be scientifically defined, thus enabling the ecological outcomes of alternative water management scenarios to be evaluated in a relatively straightforward fashion in relation to these flow thresholds or targets. We argue, however, that the ecological objectives and targets currently underpinning the development of EWRs in the Murray-Darling Basin are insufficient to permit the identification of exact water requirements or flow thresholds. Because of the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of the Murray-Darling Basin and the myriad ways in which it is valued by people, we also assert that it is unlikely that adequate ecological objectives and targets from which to determine EWRs could ever be formulated. We suggest that the current emphasis on the concept of EWRs in environmental water planning conflates science and values, perpetuating a “how much is enough?” myth whereby the significance of the social, cultural and political dimension in environmental decision-making is diminished. We support an alternative paradigm in which the contribution of ecological science to water policy and management decisions focuses on understanding ecological responses of water-dependent ecosystems and their biota to alternative management scenarios and linking these responses to the ecosystem services and human values which they support.

Bayesian Belief Networks for the metamodeling of simulation-optimization model to identify optimum water allocation scenario, Application in Miyandoab plain, Urmia Lake basin, Iran

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amirhossein Dehghanipour ◽  
Gerrit Schoups ◽  
Hossein Babazadeh ◽  
Majid Ehtiat ◽  
Bagher Zahabiyoun
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Optimization Model ◽  
Water Demand ◽  
Simulation Optimization ◽  
Bayesian Belief Networks ◽  
Environmental Water ◽  
Lake Basin ◽  
Decision Making Models ◽  
Validation Tests ◽  
Urmia Lake Basin

<p>In this study, decision-making models in uncertain conditions are developed to identify optimal strategies for reducing competition between agricultural and environmental water demand. The decision-making models are applied to the irrigated Miyandoab Plain, located upstream of endorheic Lake Urmia in Northwestern Iran. Decision-making models are conceptualized based on static and dynamic Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN). The static BBN evaluates the effects of management strategies and drought conditions on environmental flow and agricultural profit at the annual scale, while the dynamic BBN accounts for monthly dynamics of water demand and conjunctive use. The reliability and performance of BBNs depend on the quantity and quality of data used to train the BBN and create conditional probability tables (CPTs). In this study, simulated outputs from a multi-period simulation-optimization model (Dehganipour et al., 2020) are used to populate the CPTs in each BBN and reduce the BBN training error. Cross-validation tests and sensitivity analysis are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the resulting BBNs. Sensitivity analysis shows that drought conditions have the most significant impact on environmental flow compared to other variables. Cross-validation tests show that the BBNs are able to reproduce outputs of the complex simulation-optimization model used for training, and therefore provide a computationally fast alternative for decision-making under uncertainty.</p><p><strong>Reference:</strong> Dehghanipour, A. H., Schoups, G., Zahabiyoun, B., & Babazadeh, H. (2020). Meeting agricultural and environmental water demand in endorheic irrigated river basins: A simulation-optimization approach applied to the Urmia Lake basin in Iran. Agricultural Water Management, 241, 106353.</p>

Water policy responses to drought in the MDB, Australia

Water Policy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (S2) ◽  
pp. 28-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Horne
Keyword(s):  
Water Policy ◽  
Resource Planning ◽  
Environmental Water ◽  
Short Term ◽  
National Budget ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Murray Darling Basin ◽  
Millennium Drought ◽  
Basin Water ◽  
Market Infrastructure

This paper reviews water policy responses to drought in Australia, focusing on the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) during the two decades from 1997. This period, which includes the decade long Millennium drought, brought a much sharper focus to discussions of scarcity and value of water. The drought initially focused attention on rising salinity and environmental water availability, as action on both was supported by strong science, and resonated politically. The drought became a crisis in 2006. Short-term planning focused on ensuring communities did not run out of water. For the longer term, the national government responded by announcing a major package of reform measures addressing sustainability and underlying scarcity, and recognising climate change. The package strengthened MDB water market infrastructure, upgraded water resource planning and the ability of irrigators to manage their water assets more flexibly, established new sustainable diversion limits and provided funding to ensure the environment received a larger share of basin water resources. But its completeness as a package can be attributed not only to the severity of drought, but also to political leadership, a disrupting strategy in the form of national legislation and a strong national budget that provided financial resources. The drought provided a crisis, but other ingredients were necessary to ensure effective action.

Conservation of an inauspicious endangered freshwater fish, Murray hardyhead (Craterocephalus fluviatilis), during drought and competing water demands in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia

2013 ◽  
Vol 64 (9) ◽  
pp. 792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain M. Ellis ◽  
Daniel Stoessel ◽  
Michael P. Hammer ◽  
Scotte D. Wedderburn ◽  
Lara Suitor ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Freshwater Fish ◽  
Environmental Water ◽  
River Regulation ◽  
Isolated Populations ◽  
Conservation Units ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
Water Demands ◽  
Murray Darling Basin ◽  
Conservation Concern ◽  
Australian Freshwater

Approximately 40% of Australian freshwater fish species are of conservation concern, largely because of the impacts of river regulation, habitat fragmentation and alien fishes. Murray hardyhead is a threatened fish endemic to the southern Murray–Darling Basin in Australia, which has declined significantly in range and abundance since European settlement. Conservation of the species has relied largely on environmental watering of off-channel wetlands where isolated populations persist. This became problematic during recent drought (1997–2010) because of competing demands for limited water, and resentment towards environmental watering programs from communities that themselves were subject to reduced water entitlements. In response, emergency conservation measures prioritised the delivery of environmental water to minimise applied volumes. Captive maintenance programs were established for fish rescued from four genetically distinct conservation units, with varying levels of breeding success. Several translocations of wild and captive-bred fish to surrogate refuge sites were also conducted. Future recovery of the species should secure existing natural and stocked populations and translocate fish to additional appropriate sites to spread risk and reinstate natural pathways for dispersal. The approach to the conservation of Murray hardyhead during extreme environmental conditions provides insights to inform the management of fishes in other drought-prone regions of the world.

scholarly journals Resilience, Decision‐making, and Environmental Water Releases

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 777-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Long Chu ◽  
R. Quentin Grafton ◽  
Michael Stewardson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Environmental Water

Irrigator and Environmental Water Management Adaptation to Climate Change and Water Reallocation in the Murray–Darling Basin

2015 ◽  
Vol 01 (03) ◽  
pp. 1550009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mac Kirby ◽  
Jeff Connor ◽  
Mobin-ud Din Ahmad ◽  
Lei Gao ◽  
Mohammed Mainuddin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Management ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Environmental Water ◽  
Adaptation Strategy ◽  
Net Income ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Murray Darling Basin ◽  
Gross Income ◽  
The Impact

In an earlier paper (Kirby et al. 2014a), we showed that climate change and a new policy which reallocates water to the environment will impact both the flow of water and the income derived from irrigation in the Murray–Darling Basin. Here, we extend the analysis to consider irrigator and environmental water management strategies to adapt to these new circumstances. Using an integrated hydrology-economics model, we examine a range of strategies and their impact on flows and the gross income of irrigation. We show that the adaptation strategies provide a range of flow and economic outcomes in the Basin. Several strategies offer significant scope to enhance flows without large adverse impacts on the gross income of irrigation overall. Some environmental water management strategies enhance flows in the Murray part of the basin even under the drying influence of a projected median climate change. Irrigator strategies that include carryover of water in storage from one year to the next provide for lesser year to year variability in gross income and may be regarded as more advantageous in providing security against droughts. Flows and the gross income of low value irrigation industries strategies are sensitive to climate change, irrespective of adaptation strategy. Should a projected dry extreme climate change be realized, no strategy can prevent a large reduction in flows and also in gross income, particularly of low value irrigation industries. Nevertheless, environmental water management strategies mitigate the impact on flows, and in some cases may also help mitigate the impacts on gross income. High value irrigation industries are less affected (in terms of gross income, though net income will reduce because of rising water prices) by projected climate change, consistent with observation in the recent long term drought.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document