Meeting the Growing Need for Land-Water System Modelling to Assess Land Management Actions.

Elevated contaminant levels and hydrological alterations resulting from land use are degrading aquatic ecosystems on a global scale. A range of land management actions may be used to reduce or prevent this degradation. To select among alternative management actions, decision makers require predictions of their effectiveness, their economic impacts, estimated uncertainty in the predictions, and estimated time lags between management actions and environmental responses.

Dam design can impede adaptive management of environmental flows: a case study from the Opuha Dam, New Zealand.

The Opuha Dam was designed for water storage, hydropower, and to augment summer low flows. Following its commissioning in 1999, algal blooms (dominated first by Phormidium and later Didymosphenia geminata) downstream of the dam were attributed to the reduced frequency and magnitude of high-flow events. In this study, we used a 20-year monitoring dataset to quantify changes associated with the dam.

Inputs of nutrients and fecal bacteria to freshwaters from irrigated agriculture: case studies in Australia and New Zealand.

Increasing demand for global food production is leading to greater use of irrigation to supplement rainfall and enable more intensive use of land. Minimizing adverse impacts of this intensification on surface water and groundwater resources is of critical importance for the achievement of sustainable land use. In this paper we examine the linkages between irrigation runoff and resulting changes in quality of receiving surface waters and groundwaters in Australia and New Zealand.