scholarly journals Impacts of a millennium drought on butterfly faunal dynamics

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Forister ◽  
James A. Fordyce ◽  
Chris C. Nice ◽  
James H. Thorne ◽  
David P. Waetjen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Millennium Drought

Watersheds may not recover from drought

Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 372 (6543) ◽  
pp. 745-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim J. Peterson ◽  
M. Saft ◽  
M. C. Peel ◽  
A. John
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Southeastern Australia ◽  
Millennium Drought ◽  
Hydrological Droughts ◽  
Meteorological Droughts

The Millennium Drought (southeastern Australia) provided a natural experiment to challenge the assumption that watershed streamflow always recovers from drought. Seven years after the drought, the runoff (as a fraction of precipitation) had not recovered in 37% of watersheds, and the number of recovered watersheds was not increasing. When recovery did occur, it was not explained by watershed wetness. For those watersheds not recovered, ~80% showed no evidence of recovering soon, suggesting persistence within a low-runoff state. The post-drought precipitation not going to runoff was found to be likely going to increased evapotranspiration per unit of precipitation. These findings show that watersheds can have a finite resilience to disturbances and suggest that hydrological droughts can persist indefinitely after meteorological droughts.

scholarly journals Energy implications of the millennium drought on urban water cycles in Southeast Australian cities

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 214-221
Author(s):  
K. L. Lam ◽  
P. A. Lant ◽  
S. J. Kenway
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Water Conservation ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Water Supply Systems ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Demand Side ◽  
Related Energy ◽  
Millennium Drought ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Supply Systems

Abstract During the Millennium Drought in Australia, a wide range of supply-side and demand-side water management strategies were adopted in major southeast Australian cities. This study undertakes a time-series quantification (2001–2014) and comparative analysis of the energy use of the urban water supply systems and sewage systems in Melbourne and Sydney before, during and after the drought, and evaluates the energy implications of the drought and the implemented strategies. In addition, the energy implications of residential water use in Melbourne are estimated. The research highlights that large-scale adoption of water conservation strategies can have different impacts on energy use in different parts of the urban water cycle. In Melbourne, the per capita water-related energy use reduction in households related to showering and clothes-washing alone (46% reduction, 580 kWhth/p/yr) was far more substantial than that in the water supply system (32% reduction, 18 kWhth/p/yr). This historical case also demonstrates the importance of balancing supply- and demand-side strategies in managing long-term water security and related energy use. The significant energy saving in water supply systems and households from water conservation can offset the additional energy use from operating energy-intensive supply options such as inter-basin water transfers and seawater desalination during dry years.

scholarly journals Land surface albedo and vegetation feedbacks enhanced the millennium drought in south-east Australia

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 409-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason P. Evans ◽  
Xianhong Meng ◽  
Matthew F. McCabe
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Surface Characteristics ◽  
Surface Precipitation ◽  
Vegetation Fraction ◽  
Vegetation Feedbacks ◽  
Millennium Drought ◽  
Precipitation Anomalies

Abstract. In this study, we have examined the ability of a regional climate model (RCM) to simulate the extended drought that occurred throughout the period of 2002 through 2007 in south-east Australia. In particular, the ability to reproduce the two drought peaks in 2002 and 2006 was investigated. Overall, the RCM was found to reproduce both the temporal and the spatial structure of the drought-related precipitation anomalies quite well, despite using climatological seasonal surface characteristics such as vegetation fraction and albedo. This result concurs with previous studies that found that about two-thirds of the precipitation decline can be attributed to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Simulation experiments that allowed the vegetation fraction and albedo to vary as observed illustrated that the intensity of the drought was underestimated by about 10 % when using climatological surface characteristics. These results suggest that in terms of drought development, capturing the feedbacks related to vegetation and albedo changes may be as important as capturing the soil moisture–precipitation feedback. In order to improve our modelling of multi-year droughts, the challenge is to capture all these related surface changes simultaneously, and provide a comprehensive description of land surface–precipitation feedback during the droughts development.

scholarly journals A Maximum Entropy Production Evaporation – Transpiration Product for Australia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olanrewaju Abiodun ◽  
Okke Batelaan ◽  
Huade Guan ◽  
Jingfeng Wang
Keyword(s):  
Entropy Production ◽  
Maximum Entropy ◽  
Mean Absolute Error ◽  
Absolute Error ◽  
Production Model ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Drought Period ◽  
Maximum Entropy Production ◽  
Millennium Drought ◽  
Mean Square Errors

Abstract. The aim of this research is to develop evaporation and transpiration products for Australia based on the maximum entropy production model (MEP). We introduce a method into the MEP algorithm of estimating the required model parameters over the entire Australia through the use of pedotransfer function, soil properties and remotely sensed soil moisture data. Our algorithm calculates the evaporation and transpiration over Australia on daily timescales at the 5 km2 resolution for 2003–2013. The MEP evapotranspiration (ET) estimates are validated using observed ET data from 20 Eddy Covariance (EC) flux towers across 8 land cover types in Australia. We also compare the MEP ET at the EC flux towers with two other ET products over Australia; MOD16 and AWRA-L products. The MEP model outperforms the MOD16 and AWRA-L across the 20 EC flux sites, with average root mean square errors (RMSE), 8.21, 9.87 and 9.22 mm/8 days respectively. The average mean absolute error (MAE) for the MEP, MOD16 and AWRA-L are 6.21, 7.29 and 6.52 mm/8 days, the average correlations are 0.64, 0.57 and 0.61, respectively. The percentage Bias of the MEP ET was within 20 % of the observed ET at 12 of the 20 EC flux sites while the MOD16 and AWRA-L ET were within 20 % of the observed ET at 4 and 10 sites respectively. Our analysis shows that evaporation and transpiration contribute 38 % and 62 %, respectively, to the total ET across the study period which includes a significant part of the “millennium drought” period (2003–2009) in Australia. The data (Abiodun et al., 2019) is available at https://doi.org/10.25901/5ce795d313db8.

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.

A holistic approach to water supply network operation – using desalination to improve cost efficiency

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-304
Author(s):  
A. Jewell ◽  
C. Alepin
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Financial Analysis ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Bulk Water ◽  
Supply Network ◽  
Network Modelling ◽  
Best Value ◽  
Millennium Drought ◽  
Network Operation ◽  
System Risk

Seqwater is one of Australia's largest water businesses, with one of the most geographically spread and diverse asset bases. This includes 37 water treatment plants (WTPs), more than 600 km of bulk water supply pipeline, and the Gold Coast Desalination Plant (GCDP) constructed as part of the South East Queensland Millennium Drought response. The production of desalinated water has a greater unit-volumetric cost than the treatment of surface water due to high production energy costs. This paper presents the holistic approach adopted by Seqwater to find a solution for supply contingency while undertaking necessary upgrades and maintenance at the Mudgeeraba WTP. Through a process of network modelling, system risk mapping and financial analysis, it was demonstrated that operating the GCDP for 18 days would provide the best value solution due to the operating costs being offset by bulk supply network operational efficiency improvements.

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