Water managers now able to predict potential foodweb changes associated with floodplain inundation

New research through the Goyder Institute for Water Research project – Ecological connectivity of the River Murray: managing ecological outcomes and water quality risks through integrated river management – is helping water managers to better understand and quickly assess the impact of management decisions on the ecology of the River Murray.

Dr Matt Gibbs (The University of Adelaide and Department for Environment and Water [DEW]) leads the project with Professor Justin Brookes (The University of Adelaide), with support from colleagues from CSIRO, SARDI, DEW and The University of Adelaide. Their research over the last two years has focused on quantifying the relationships between the hydraulics of the river and water quality risks and ecological responses. 

Dr Gibbs recently presented their research to over 130 water industry professionals from 20 countries in a webinar titled: Advances in Integrated River Management, run by the International Centre for Excellence in Water Resource Management (ICE WaRM). The webinar is available to view online and includes Goyder Institute researcher Dr Steve Hemming presenting his research from the Translating Ngarrindjeri Yannarumi into water resource risk assessments project.

“We’re improving our understanding of some of the in-channel processes that may be altered by using structures to increase inundation along the river. For example, if we use infrastructure to raise water levels to give trees a drink, then we’ll have increased storage and the cross-sectional area of the river, and the speed of the water flow will reduce,” said Dr Gibbs.

“Faster flowing water, which some fish species rely on for parts of their lifecycle, might be lost if we’re inundating areas to look after the trees – and so we might be compromising another part of the ecosystem.”

Zooplankton and Murray cod depend on drift in the water column, so the water velocity needs to be high enough to keep them suspended and moving through the channel, so that they can spread out and increase their abundance. Zooplankton and Murray cod are both important organisms within the Murray River foodweb.

“Our field work has shown that we find more of these creatures when the velocity exceeds 0.2 metres per second and up to 0.3 metres per second, depending on which process of their lifecycle we’re looking at. When there’s more of them, there’s more food and we can support a more productive foodweb and ultimately a larger population of fish.”

Dr Gibbs and his team have incorporated their new research into the eWater Source hydrological model of the River Murray, so water managers can predict what will happen to the foodweb when the hydraulics of the river change with flooding. They’ve also included data from their research on the water quality risks associated with inundation.

“There are a lot of resources on the floodplain, like organic carbon and nutrients, that will be brought back into the water following inundation. This can be a good thing to stimulate the foodweb, but it can also lead to problems if we’re bringing a lot of carbon or nutrients into a river with low flows – there’ll be an increased chance of hypoxic blackwater events or algal blooms,” said Dr Gibbs. 

The new functionality of the eWater Source model predicts organic matter on the floodplain; how that will release carbon to the water when inundated; and how that carbon might be broken down in the water by micro-organisms and in doing so influence dissolved oxygen levels. It’s the first time a model has been developed for the River Murray that incorporates water quality characteristics, ecological responses, and river hydraulics at the scale of hundreds of kilometres of river reaches to inform infrastructure operations.

“To compute the hydraulic change typically takes days of computer time at this scale – we have pre-processed these calculations to enable our model to look it up almost instantaneously,” said Dr Gibbs, “It gives water managers a lot more information to start help shaping their objectives and what benefits and tradeoffs they may be creating when they make management decisions like inundation through infrastructure operations”.

“If management can keep that foodweb connected and keep those habitat conditions there, then we can be more confident we’re going to get the desired ecological outcomes,’ said Dr Gibbs.

Contact Dr Matt Gibbs for more information about the eWater Source model and the Ecological connectivity of the River Murray project or get in touch with Goyder Institute Director Dr Kane Aldridge for more information about the Institute’s research within the Murray Darling Basin.

Tags: Department for Environment and Water (DEW) Environmental Water Healthy Ecosystems Murray River Murray-Darling Basin

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Chris Wright

Manager Water Science, DEW

Chris Wright holds significant experience in public sector senior leadership, having led policy, scientific and operational business units over the last twelve years in both State and Commonwealth government agencies. Chris has excellent experiences in leading policy and strategy formulation. He is skilled in building and maintaining networks across the public and private sectors to facilitate business delivery; leading and negotiating with others to achieve outcomes; and in bridging the science-policy gap, drawing on earlier roles in geospatial information systems (GIS) consulting. Chris’s formal qualifications include a Bachelor of Social Science, a Masters of Spatial Information Science and graduation from the AICD Company Directors course in 2019.

Dr Ilka Wallis

Senior Lecturer, Flinders University

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Ilka is also an Adjunct Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Manitoba, Canada since 2017.

Peter Goonan

Environmental Science Branch, EPA

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Manager, Research Stakeholders and Planning, SA Water

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Principal Advisor Research Partnerships, DEW

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Dr Tanya Doody

Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

Dr Tanya Doody is a Principal Research Scientist working on high impact spatial eco-hydrological projects within CSIRO’s Land and Water Business Unit. Dr Doody leads the Managing Water Ecosystems Group, based in Adelaide, Albury and Canberra and has significant experience in quantifying the water requirements of vegetation and at times, their impact on water resources. This involves ecophysiological field-based research to underpin remote sensing tools to scale regionally to improve our understanding of the effect of flood regimes on the health of water-dependent ecosystems on the Murray-Darling Basin floodplains. Additional research includes investigating the ecological response of vegetation to water availability and environmental water to inform integrated basin water planning and management.

Professor Lin Crase

Dean of Programs (Accounting & Finance), UniSA

Professor Lin Crase is Professor of Economics and Dean of Programs (Accounting & Finance) at UniSA. He joined UniSA in February 2016 as Head of School of Commerce. Prior to commencing at UniSA, Lin was Professor and Director of the Centre for Water Policy and Management at La Trobe University.

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Professor Justin Brookes

Director, Water Research Centre, University of Adelaide

Justin has broad research interests in limnology and water treatment with a primary focus on coupling between hydrodynamics, biology and water quality contaminants such as cyanobacteria and pathogens. He is a founding member of the management committee of the IWA Specialist Group on Lake and Reservoir Management and member of the Steering Committee for the Global Lakes Ecological Observatory Network.

Justin has a PhD and a Bachelor of Science degree with Honours from the University of Adelaide.

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Accountant

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Daniel is a Fellow of CPA Australia and has a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Adelaide.

Dr Alec Rolston

Interim Director

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Alec holds a PhD from the National University of Ireland Maynooth and has worked with An Fóram Uisce|The Water Forum and the Dundalk Institute of Technology in Ireland as well as the MANTEL Innovative Training Network across Europe.

Alec spent his early career in Adelaide working with Flinders University through the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth (CLLAMM) Ecology Research Cluster and within the Department for Environment and Water.

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Daniel brings experience in project management and knowledge transfer and application from 4 years working as a Senior Hydrogeologist in the Department for Environment and Water (DEW) in South Australia and from 13 years of private sector work in environmental management, science and engineering in Australia and the South Pacific. His work with DEW has included providing technical advice to the development and revision of Water Allocation Plans around South Australia in collaboration with researchers and policy makers, and managing a team of groundwater modellers and hydrogeologists involved in an assortment of water resource management issues.

Daniel has a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons, Environmental) and a Bachelor of Science (Geography) from the University of Western Australia.

Professor Enzo Lombi

Dean of Research, UniSA STEM

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Dr Carmel Pollino

Research Director Land and Water, CSIRO

Dr Carmel Pollino is a Research Director for Land and Water at CSIRO. She has 20 years of experience working on water issues in Australia and throughout Asia. Carmel has degrees in science and environmental law and works across the science and policy interface. Significant areas of research in Environmental Flows, Hydrology, Ecology and Integrated River Basin Planning. Carmel is the lead and also a contributor to global working groups on water and has published widely in this domain.

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Head of School of Biological Sciences, The University of Adelaide

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Director, Water Security, Policy and Planning, Department for Environment and Water (DEW)

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Professor Okke Batelaan

Dean, School of the Environment, Flinders University

Professor Okke Batelaan is a graduate of the Free University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (MSc – Hydrogeology) and of the Free University Brussels, Belgium (PhD – Engineering). He worked for more than 20 years at the Free University Brussels and also led the hydrogeology group at the KU Leuven, Belgium since 2006. He was chairman of the Interuniversity Programme in Water Resources Engineering.

Since 2012 Okke Batelaan is Strategic Professor in Hydrogeology and currently Dean of the School of the Environment, Flinders University. Okke has broad experience in teaching groundwater hydrology, groundwater modelling, GIS and remote sensing for hydrological applications. He was supervisor of more than 140 MSc and 25 PhD students. He has extensive research experience and a publication record in shallow groundwater hydrology and modeling, recharge-discharge estimation and modeling, urban hydrology and distributed modelling, ecohydrology and impacts of land use and climate change on groundwater systems. He coordinated and participated in a large number of projects in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia and Australia. He is editor-in-chief of Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies and of MDPI-Hydrology.