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Measuring and modelling the impacts of land use on ecological river condition
Citation
Davies, PE and Magierowski, R and Read, S and Horrigan, N, Measuring and modelling the impacts of land use on ecological river condition, Landscape Logic: Integrating science for landscape management, CSIRO Publishing, T Lefroy, A Curtis, A Jakeman, J McKee (ed), Collingwood, VIC, Australia, pp. 23-37. ISBN 9780643103542 (2012) [Research Book Chapter]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2012 CSIRO
Official URL: http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/6769.htm
Abstract
This project aimed to understand the influence of land use and land management on the
ecological condition ('health') of Tasmanian rivers at local and catchment scales. The five
project phases were developing a conceptual model linking land use and other drivers to
ecosystem responses, finding evidence to support model parameterisation, constructing a
simplified river health model for communication purposes; developing a Bayesian Belief
Network (BBN) from the full conceptual model using both expert elicitation and local evidence,
and evaluation of the BBN and modelling of management scenarios. A significant finding was
a disturbance threshold associated with the area of a catchment upstream of a sampling point
classed as 'grazing land', characterised by a change in algal-driven river metabolism and river
macroinvertebrate communities. Understanding the spatial scales (site, reach, catchment) at
which key drivers of ecological responses operated (e.g. riparian condition, sediment input)
was also important. Project outcomes were incorporated into a decision support system
containing the BBN, and into fact-sheets describing river health impacts of land use and
management scenarios. Key lessons included the importance of a conceptual framework
throughout the project, identifying relative inferential strength when integrating evidence for
drivers. using both correlative and experimental data to identify relative roles of nutrients and
fine sediment in driving benthic biological responses to land use, the need to manage drivers
of river health at both catchment and local scales, defining management 'levers' connecting
project design to deliverables, and maintaining an objective, adaptive scientific process when
developing evidence-based management tools.
Item Details
Item Type: | Research Book Chapter |
---|---|
Research Division: | Environmental Sciences |
Research Group: | Environmental management |
Research Field: | Environmental assessment and monitoring |
Objective Division: | Environmental Management |
Objective Group: | Fresh, ground and surface water systems and management |
Objective Field: | Assessment and management of freshwater ecosystems |
UTAS Author: | Davies, PE (Professor Peter Davies) |
UTAS Author: | Magierowski, R (Dr Regina Magierowski) |
UTAS Author: | Horrigan, N (Dr Nelli Horrigan) |
ID Code: | 77708 |
Year Published: | 2012 |
Deposited By: | Zoology |
Deposited On: | 2012-05-21 |
Last Modified: | 2014-10-14 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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