A Risk-Based Ecohydrological Approach to Assessing Environmental Flow Regimes.

For several decades there has been recognition that water resource development alters river flow regimes and impacts ecosystem values. Determining strategies to protect or restore flow regimes to achieve ecological outcomes is a focus of water policy and legislation in many parts of the world. However, consideration of existing environmental flow assessment approaches for application in Queensland identified deficiencies precluding their adoption.

Reconciling the role of organic matter pathways in aquatic food webs by measuring multiple tracers in individuals.

Few studies measure multiple ecological tracers in individual organisms, thus limiting our ability to differentiate among organic matter source pathways and understand consequences of dietary variation and the use of external subsidies in complex food webs. We combined two tracers, stable isotope (SI) ratios and fatty acids (FA), to investigate linkages among ecological compartments (water column, benthos, riparian zone) in food webs in waterholes of a dryland river network, the Border Rivers in southwestern Queensland, Australia. Comprehensive analyses of sources (plankton, periphyton, leaf litter, riparian grasses) and animals (benthic insects, mollusks, large crustaceans, fishes) for SI and FA showed that all three zones contribute to animal biomass, depending on species and life stage.

Fish population persistence in hydrologically variable landscapes.

Forecasting population persistence in environments subjected to periodic disturbances represents a general challenge for ecologists. In arid and semiarid regions, climate change and human water use pose significant threats to the future persistence of aquatic biota whose populations typically depend on permanent refuge waterholes for their viability. As such, habitats are increasingly being lost as a result of decreasing runoff and increasing water extraction.