Environmental watering in the Murray-Darling Basin occurs in a working river system alongside other water users and competing interests. Delivering large volumes of environmental water in a basin operated primarily for human and productive water needs, requires careful planning and management to negotiate operational rules developed for off-stream use whilst optimising environmental outcomes avoiding third party impacts. Doing so requires a shift in approach to the engagement and involvement of science. With an increasing understanding of watering requirements of ecosystems and the potential for whole of system watering actions, the management of environmental water to deliver environmental outcomes has needed to continuously and rapidly adapt.
Expectations from the community to demonstrate the effective use of environmental water to deliver ecological outcomes have increased with the making of the Murray Darling Basin Plan (2012) and the legacy of the millennium drought. Our ability to demonstrate and communicate the outcomes being achieved is dependent on scientifically robust and defensible science, as is our capacity to adaptively manage environmental water. The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder’s Long-term Intervention Monitoring program provides a platform to build collaborative partnerships with scientists and the decision makers, both locally and at the whole of Basin scale. Such partnerships allow contemporary science to shape real-time decision making, improving environmental outcomes both in the short and longer-terms – ultimately influencing policy approaches.
The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder will present on progress that has been made to date in implementing the Long-term Intervention Monitoring Project, key outcomes that have been observed to date and the ways in which the science is informing the adaptive management of environmental water.