Understanding how energy and water are distributed at the Earth’s surface is a key part of predicting climate extremes such as drought, heatwaves, and flooding. Depending on the landscape and prevailing conditions, rainfall might join rivers, get stored […]
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Australia Institute report find communities, graziers, small irrigators and native title holders are being left behind A new report looking at how the $13bn for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan is being spent has found that big agribusiness is […]
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Barnaby Joyce, Australia’s new special envoy for drought assistance and recovery, will have to be careful he doesn’t do more harm than good. Government funding of agriculture during a drought typically falls into three categories: subsidies for farm […]
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One of the likely effects of rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is an increase in plant water use efficiency. This is due to the expected enhancement of photosynthesis under future atmospheric CO2 concentrations, together with a partial […]
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Doctors learn a lot about their patients’ health by taking their temperature. An elevated temperature, or fever, can be a sign of illness. The same goes for plants, but their temperatures on a global scale are harder to […]
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For the first time, water for the environment has flowed through a 2000-kilometre network of rivers in the northern Murray–Darling Basin, reaching the Menindee Lakes near Broken Hill. Murray–Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) head of compliance Russell James and […]
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Amid the politics, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was originally designed primarily to restore the rivers’ environment. While questions have been raised over the plan’s governance, economics, and political commitment by the states, it is important to note […]
Read moreGEWEX, the Global Energy and Water Exchanges project, is holding its 8th GEWEX Science Conference from 6-11 May 2018 in Canmore, Alberta, Canada. The 2018 GEWEX Science Conference is structured around the topic of challenges confronting our ability to […]
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Land-based plants take up CO2 from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis. This is called the terrestrial carbon sink, and it’s responsible for slowing the increase of atmospheric CO2. In 2011 there was a large global terrestrial […]
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Infrastructure Australia says governments should privatize state-owned metropolitan water utility businesses. Australians can expect to pay double for their water supply within 20 years unless there are big reforms, a report from Infrastructure Australia says. It says a lack […]
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