The question sounds grand and may be a bit difficult to give a simple answer to, but that was the question put forward to the participants at the HEPEX workshop in Melbourne in February. HEPEX was founded as an initiative […]
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Most major floods in South East Queensland arrive in five-year bursts, once every 40 years or so, according to our new research. Yet flood estimation, protection and management approaches are still designed on the basis that flood risk stays the same […]
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In an opinion piece in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, University of Wollongong researcher Dr Sarah Hamylton writes about the emotional challenges facing environmental scientists as the effects of climate change become more obvious and more widespread. She urges more scientists […]
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A group of prominent scientists and economists have issued a stark warning to the nation’s politicians: the Murray-Darling basin plan is failing to achieve environmental goals and is a “gross waste” of money. The group of seven economists […]
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The world is watching the unfolding Cape Town water crisis with horror. On “Day Zero”, now predicted to be just ten weeks away, engineers will turn off the water supply. The South African city’s four million residents will […]
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The Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) is powerless to prevent upstream farmers harvesting overland floodwaters desperately needed to flow through the river system for the benefit of all users, the authority’s head has admitted. It comes as details […]
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Given the outraged reaction from some state water ministers to the disallowance of an amendment to the Murray Darling Basin Plan, you would be forgiven for thinking that a heinous crime had been committed against farmers in upstream states. In fact, what happened […]
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It is disappointing to see disingenuous criticism of the exhaustive work the Murray-Darling Basin Authority conducted during the Northern Basin Review. I believe that this criticism has contributed to the decision of the Australian Parliament to disallow an […]
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The Murray-Darling Basin Authority omitted evidence from a report on satellite monitoring technology that apparently showed water bought by taxpayers for environment purposes was being sucked up by a downstream irrigator, a former senior staffer said. The discovery […]
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In the frenetic last days of haggling between federal Minister for Water Resources David Littleproud and Labor counterpart Tony Burke to secure the opposition’s crucial support to change the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, the new minister trotted out a […]
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After a long and contentious public debate, in 2012 Australia embarked on a significant and expensive water recovery program to restore the Murray-Darling Basin’s ecosystems. Despite general agreement that a certain amount of water should be reserved to restore […]
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As Cape Town counts down to “day zero” and the prospect of its taps being turned off, there have inevitably been questions about whether the same fate might befall a major Australian city. The most striking parallels have been […]
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Vivid scenes of worried Cape Town residents clutching empty water vessels in long snaking queues are ricocheting around the globe. Everyone is asking, “How did this happen?” Or, more precisely, “Can it happen in my city?” The importance of […]
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We know that the heat is uncomfortable for humans and animals, but how does our native flora fare? New Western Sydney University research has offered a glimpse of whether our trees will cope with ever-rising average temperatures and […]
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Contemporary hydrology is concerned with pressing problems that often involve the interactions between rivers and groundwater. A review article recently published in Reviews of Geophysics explored scientific advances in observing, quantifying, measuring, and predicting the characteristics and processes that occur at the […]
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More than five years after the Murray Darling Basin Plan was implemented, it’s clear that it is not delivering on its key objectives. The Basin Plan, at its core, is about reducing the amount of water that can be extracted […]
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New study uses detailed satellite observations to estimate evaporation from irrigation, water bodies and wetlands worldwide. A good part of our global surface and groundwater resources evaporates from wetlands, water bodies and irrigated areas. Some of this so-called ‘secondary’ […]
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The Australian Climate and Water Summer Institute is a six-week event (7 December 2017 – 2 February 2018) during which several of the most talented Australian students and early career researchers work in teams with experts from a […]
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TERN OzFlux is a national ecosystem research network set up to provide the Australian and global ecosystem modelling communities with nationally consistent observations of energy, carbon and water exchange between the atmosphere and key Australian ecosystems. TERN OzFlux […]
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Precipitation is arguably the most important driver of the terrestrial hydrological cycle. Since most research and operational hydrological applications require precipitation data, most hydrologists have probably faced the following question: “Which precipitation dataset should I use among the […]
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