An environmentally sustainable Australia
Promoting and maintaining good health
Frontier technologies for building and transforming Australian industries
Sustainable natural resource management
Improving competitiveness through a whole of industry approach
Improved trade and market access
Creating an innovative culture
Protecting Australia from invasive diseases and pests
Sandy Sharman from University of Southern Queensland and the Hon. Sussan Ley, MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, at the launch of the Environmental Toolkit for Traprock Woolgrowers at Terrica Woolshed near Stanthorpe Queensland on 21 April 2006. | An Environmental Toolkit was developed as a part of a project called Integrating paddock and catchment planning: a woolgrower driven approach to sustainable landscape management funded under Land, Water & Wool - a collaboration between Land & Water Australia and Australian Wool Innovation Limited.
The project was a collaboration between Land, Water & Wool, the Traprock Woolgrowers Association, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) and the Queensland Murray-Darling Association and was led by the University's Dr Geoff Cockfield.
The Toolkit was launched by the Hon. Sussan Ley, MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, who was introduced by Bobbie Brazil in her dual roles as Chairman of Land & Water Australia and Chancellor of the University of Southern Queensland.
The project undertook monitoring of native pasture and woodland condition, developed case studies of the economics of changing grazing and vegetation management, examined social demographics through the use of the photo-voice technique and developed an on-line monitoring framework that forms part of the Traprock Integrated Management System. |
Grazing can promote biodiversity - skilled management of livestock grazing can increase production and native biodiversity in grasslands. That has been one of the findings from several Land, Water & Wool research projects.
Grazing trials in the mid-north of South Australia have found that strategic, rotational grazing according to plant growth rates promotes healthier native perennial plants, reduces bare ground and improves water infiltration while at the same time allowing stocking rates to double from 2.5 DSE per hectare to 5 DSE per hectare on some sites.
Similarly, in Tasmania's Midlands, research has shown that sheep grazing on the native 'run' country is necessary to maintain biodiversity by reducing the biomass of the dominant native grasses, and controlling exotic herbs and grasses. Maintaining a diverse set of management practices at the landscape scale is essential to maximising biodiversity across catchments.
Lake Argyle, Western Australia | With an outlook of fifty years plus, the Northern Australia Irrigation Futures project (a part of the National Program for Sustainable Irrigation) is attempting to develop a framework for decision making about irrigation in northern Australia for communities and governments.
This work is not only challenging scientifically but often evokes passionate responses. For some, it is a much needed opportunity to consider the futures available to northern Australia; for others it raises concerns about increased pressure for irrigation in northern Australia; and for others it raises the question of who should determine the future of the region. In recognition of these perspectives, the Irrigation Futures Steering Committee recently clarified that the project is not about deciding whether new irrigation developments should or should not occur in northern Australia, but it is about assisting those who will need to make such decisions by improving the knowledge, tools and processes available to them. |
Waterlogging compounds salinity but help is at hand! Salt-affected land is highly variable across Australia because of the interaction of the amount of salt with the extent of waterlogging and soil type; highly salty and waterlogged clay soils are the most difficult to manage. Within this huge variation, productive options have been identified for approximately half of the salt-affected land in Australia.
Land, Water & Wool projects have identified that the returns and benefits from salt-land pastures vary greatly from farm to farm, but they usually comprise a mixture of the direct amount of feed produced and the fact that the additional feed is often 'out of season', when other pastures are scarce, which gives it a much greater value. The reduced erosion and increased biodiversity associated with good ground cover are other benefits.
One of the early projects to get going under the Environmental Water Allocation ProgramNatural Resource Buybacks and their Use to Secure Environmental Flows is already starting to deliver tangible benefits.
The project, led by Michelle Scoccimarro and Drew Collins of BDA Group, is playing an influential role by exploring the use of market-based measures to inform Murray-Darling Basin Commission deliberations on how to meet environmental flow targets in the River Murray. Buyback instruments, provided they are well designed, could potentially provide benefits to both irrigators and the environment in a more efficient manner.
Veg Futures 2006: the conference in the field - more than 500 people from all over Australia attended Veg Futures 2006: the conference in the field in Albury in March 2006.
The conference was convened by Land & Water Australia and Greening Australia and provided an ideal venue to confront some of the difficult questions about managing native vegetation in rural and production landscapes.
Questions such as 'what is the role and value of native vegetation in regional landscapes?', 'who pays for native vegetation management?' and 'how do we balance conservation and production?' challenged delegates. A highlight of the conference was the field trips which helped people to improve their knowledge of practical, on-ground management of native vegetation. More than 90% of survey respondents judged the conference a resounding success.
Dr Brad Pusey of Griffith University, left, and Sebastian Lee, right, from Wagiman (Guwardugan) Rangers, Pine Creek NT, sampling the Daly River with an electrofisher for the Daly River Fish and Flows Project. | A significant development during 2005-06 was the Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge (TRACK) research hub which attracted $8 million in funds over 2006-07 to 2009-10 from the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities Program administered by the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage and another $5 million from the Australian Government's Raising National Water Standards program over the same period.
The TRACK research hub brings together Australia's leading tropical river and coastal scientists and managers to focus applied research on the extraordinary coastlines, rivers and floodplains of northern Australia.
TRACK builds on the excellent work and collaboration forged through the Tropical Rivers Program and will be managed by Land & Water Australia. It involves a consortium including Griffith University, Charles Darwin University, CSIRO Land and Water, University of Western Australia, and the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA). |
While there are undoubtedly complex hydrological and other technical issues involved in delivering the National Water Initiative, it is arguable that the social, economic and institutional challenges in reforming water use and management in Australia are even more critical. Moreover, these challenges need to be understood by, and informed by, the major water using industries.
A ten-point research agenda Water Perspectives was published, disseminated widely and discussed with potential partners including the National Water Commission, identifying the contribution of social sciences in support of implementation of the National Water Initiative.
Horticulturists seeking to introduce the use of recycled water on their properties now have guidelines and a new field tool thanks to research funded by the National Program for Sustainable Irrigation. | Effluent put to good use - drought and concerns over the sustainability of some water sources have heightened interest amongst irrigators and urban communities in recycling water. The National Program for Sustainable Irrigation has investigated the use of treated effluent for vegetable production near Melbourne and Adelaide. While recycling has immediate appeal to all, it is not without its challenges - is it safe for growers and consumers? Are there potential environmental impacts, as the water is often high in salinity and nutrients such as phosphorus? The research work has proven that produce grown with recycled water is as good as any other produce grown with traditional sources. It has also shown that to avoid salinity, recycled water needs to be 'shandied' with better quality water and irrigators need to adopt the highest standards of irrigation management.
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To help irrigators, researchers and growers have drafted a set of best management practice guidelines and produced a practical 'salinity wheel' to show growers the salt tolerance of different crops and how to convert between different units used to measure salinity.
This practical research is finding a sustainable and profitable solution that generates healthy local produce and reduces the environmental impacts that can arise from alternative means of effluent disposal while of course saving water.
Rowan Reid (University of Melbourne) of the Australian Master TreeGrowers Program supported by JVAP. | The Master TreeGrowers program (led by Rowan Reid from the University of Melbourne and supported by the Joint Venture Agroforestry Program since 1996) assists a 'tree change' working with farmers to diagnose, design and evaluate the role of trees on their farms and to make better decisions.
The seventy-five courses held between 1996 and 2005 have been attended by over 1350 participants. These leading regional practitioners have planted farm forests, advised local government and planners, and acted as advisors and mentors for new industry participants. |
Knowledge for Regional NRM Program connecting researchers and practitioners. Funded through the Natural Heritage Trust, this program has been working with Australia's regional NRM organisations and knowledge providers to create a better link between research and practice.
The program has been in place for eighteen months and has been investigating and testing ways to simplify access to information and improve information exchange between regional bodies and research/information providers.
The options cover three fundamental areas improving capacity to manage NRM knowledge, creating information tools and knowledge brokering processes. Each helps people to search for, access and share knowledge.
To achieve this, the program has been working closely with regions and has established pilots for the development of knowledge strategies, region to region mentoring and the collection of local knowledge. It has also worked with regions to develop and deliver a number of workshops and forums including the first national monitoring and evaluation symposium, a North Australian Forum and a socio-economic workshop that brought together practitioners and regional officers.
The program has developed an innovative web-based 'NRM Toolbar' to provide a highly intuitive way to find and use search tools and knowledge sources. Testing of the concept design of the NRM Toolbar with regions and facilitators has been extremely positive.
iLand & Water Australia Director Dianne Bentley during a break from the June 2006 Board meeting in northern New South Wales focussing on peri-urban issues. | Peri-urban areas are neither urban nor rural, but a dynamic interface and transitional zone, characterised by a diverse range of land use, communities and environments. The intrusion of urban land uses and subdivisions on previously rural land uses results in progressive fragmentation and a multiplicity of often competing land uses and interests in land. Significantly, there is a clear lack of integration between the policy and planning measures that do exist and NRM goals and initiatives. Building on a significant Land & Water Australia funded project led by Professor Michael Buxton from RMIT, an expert research scoping workshop was held in May 2006. Workshop participants encompassed a wide range of expertise from urban planning, human dimensions of NRM, landscape ecology, catchment management, demography, specific industry expertise, and government policy, including state and local government participants. A six point research agenda was produced. |
Under major Australian Government funded programs, fifty-six NRM regions covering all of Australia have developed their own catchment-based plans to manage natural resources at a regional landscape scale. They have also developed accompanying regional investment strategies to appropriately direct investment to generate resource condition change by effecting practice change among landholders.
A major new project jointly funded with the Natural Heritage Trust commenced in May 2006 to work over the next four years with ten regional NRM groups around the country to examine and develop improved processes for making successful investments in NRM practice change. The project is working with regions on: improving the ability to track change; developing improved business systems; enhancing social learning capacity; developing partnerships for multiple benefits; and improving the levels of trust between key investors and partners.
Nearly thirty-five regions expressed interest in participating in this action learning project, which will strengthen the adaptive management capacities of regional NRM bodies.
Cloud formation over Crackenback during the Land & Water Australia staff workshop in April 2006. | Understanding Australia's changing climate is essential if we are to be more profitable in our farming, grazing and NRM. If we are to accurately predict seasonal climate variability in the context of a changing climate we must know more about the components wind, rainfall, evaporation and temperature. Equally importantly, we must store these data sets in a readily accessible form - so that all can use them. SILO is a warehouse of climate data upon which the Managing Climate Variability Program is building a range of farmer, agribusiness and natural resource manager decision support tools. Improving the data sets stored on SILO is a fundamental component of the business of Managing Climate Variability - quality data in and useful knowledge out.
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Dr Michael Roderick and Professor Graham Farquhar of the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting have been working to unpack rainfall and evaporation trends for Australia.
Evaporative demand is measured using evaporation pans. In Australia, like many other parts of the world, it has been found that average evaporation from these pans has been steadily declining.
Analysing records going back to 1975 for sixty-six evaporation pans around Australia, the researchers found declining wind speeds have caused most of the decrease in evaporation. So, despite warming, over the past 30 years our climate has on average nationally become calmer. Why the wind speed is reducing in Australia is a question that awaits further research.
The Managing Climate Variability team have found that 'cut-off lows' (portions of low pressure systems separated from the bulk of the front) deliver the most soaking rain over north-west Victoria, and not passing low pressure fronts.
Peter McIntosh, principal research scientist with CSIRO's marine and atmospheric research division, found that the most valuable rains during the growing season came from cut-off lows, as opposed to fronts. However, he cautioned that a system accurate enough to be relied upon was some way off yet.
This research under Managing Climate Variability aims to define climate patterns and, from that, determine the key components that require research so we can better forecast seasonal climate.
The project is already challenging conventional wisdom on what drives weather in the Wimmera/Mallee region. Not only are cut-off lows the key for good rainfall events in April-June and September-October, but the Indian Ocean has a bigger role in the weather patterns of north-west Victoria than previously thought, while Pacific Ocean events such as El Nino and La Nina may not be as influential as they have been credited with.
Large scale global weather patterns can also have an influence on north-west Victoria. For example, the southern annular mode pattern around the Antarctic is being suggested as a possible reason why fronts are passing further south than usual.
Testing the Integrated Wood Processing demonstration plant at Narrogin, Western Australia. The plant has used oil mallee crops to produce activated carbon, eucalyptus oil, charcoal and renewable energy.
| Oil mallee developments - testing of the pilot $20 million integrated wood processing plant at Narrogin has been completed and successfully produced activated carbon from trees, as well as eucalyptus oil, renewable energy and charcoal. In order to invite commercial investment, Verve Energy is currently analysing the test results (to be completed at the end of 2006) prior to preparing an Information Memorandum presenting economic and operational feasibility. The Western Australian Minister for Energy, Science and Technology has made a commitment to fully explore the commercialisation prospects for this innovative renewable energy technology. There are more than 10,000 hectares of oil mallees planted to support expanded production, which also provide considerable benefits for wheatbelt farmers in lowering saline watertables and slowing the advance of salinity, especially in the productive lower parts of the landscape. The Joint Venture Agroforestry Program supported the early scoping study for the plant and oil mallee research. |
 | Stock and Waterways publication Rivers and creeks are the arteries of the landscape, and the land close to them (riparian areas) is crucial for landscape health. In vast areas of Australia, the need to provide access to streams for grazing stock is a major barrier to efforts to protect and restore riparian areas. This fantastic book brings together results from hundreds of research projects on managing riparian areas and tailors it for the people who make most management decisions on riparian land. The guide helps farmers to identify their riparian land and to understand the role it plays in maintaining a healthy waterway. It offers practical advice on how to manage riparian land both productively and sustainably using a number of case studies from farmers throughout Australia, with great photos and clear diagrams. |
A new emerging field of NRM science is Landscape Biotechnology - the application of biotechnological ingenuity to our interaction with the landscape, natural resources, and ecology.
According to Ben Gilna, who completed a PhD on the topic, Australia is currently a leader in many of the innovations within Landscape Biotechnology but needs to develop a conceptual basis and capacity to handle the ethical, legal and social implications of these technologies.
Interventional Landscape Biotechnology includes genetically modified viruses and nematodes to control pest animals or vaccinate threatened populations from disease, and species-specific toxins. Informational Landscape Biotechnology includes moves to real-time assays of soil microflora metabolism, applications of genomics to breeding histories, and the assay of functional genetic information from the landscape.
These new technological capacities are developing very fast and yet they are rarely discussed or considered part of an integrated phenomenon.
Molecular environmental diagnostics for sustainable land management - cutting edge science in the field of functional gene technology has developed a novel approach to examine the effects of land and water management practices and major perturbation events such as pollution, eutrophication and acidification on soil and sediment-based ecosystems.
The quantitative molecular approach enables an understanding of the key biogeochemical reactions in elemental cycles that are essential for the integrity of ecosystems. The technology has been successfully applied to freshwater, terrestrial and marine ecosystems in production and natural landscapes.
Functional gene technology involves measurement of genes that code for enzymes. Measurement of these functional genes has the advantage of specificity and relates directly to both process rates and microbial population density. By using primers for conserved regions of each gene of interest, the majority of the relevant part of the microbial community can be sampled, without the need for identification of species.
Dr Matt Colloff of CSIRO has been instrumental in applying this exciting technology to assessing natural and agro-ecological functioning, global warming, farming systems and pollution monitoring.
"It was just a black saline area and would not grow anything. To see the comparison is just unbelievable. It's above my wildest dreams." Alan 'Bluey' Smith, wool grower, Mt Mercer, Victoria, commenting on the Sustainable Grazing on Saline Land demonstration site on his property, after the establishment of a salt-tolerant pasture. | How do we learn things and what helps us make decisions? Researchers in Land, Water & Wool wanted to make sure they provided information in ways that would help farmers make decisions on their properties. They came up with the 'Five P Framework' Profit, Proof, People, Place and Promise. Applying this approach has generated a diverse mix of information products and innovative ways to engage producers and NRM workers across Australia. It has good parallels with the program's Sustainable Grazing on Saline Land projects which have emphasised the importance of promoting pride amongst woolgrowers in how they manage saline land.
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Land & Water Australia is developing a practical understanding of how to assess sustainability through a number of projects. Examples of making 'sustainable agriculture' more tangible and measurable from this year's portfolio include:
Assessment by role: very useful/extremely useful (%) | Land & Water Australia's National Riparian Lands R&D Program ran nine workshops across Australia between November 2005 and March 2006. The workshops were designed to bring together the knowledge gained from research investment over thirteen years of the program. They looked at how riparian areas function, how they can be better managed and how to engage local communities in protecting, maintaining and rehabilitating these important parts of the landscape. They were very popular with participants, attracting about 250 natural resource planners and advisers from government NRM agencies and regional catchment management authorities. |
In addition, a tailor made workshop was delivered to Greening Australia as part of its national training program and to the Gippsland Dairy industry. The workshops featured researchers Ian Rutherfurd, Peter Davies, Amy Jansen, Andrew Brooks, Don Thomson, Phil Price, Stuart Bunn and Siwan Lovett presenting their research findings to participants and providing an opportunity for face to face interaction.
These workshops were well received as evidenced by the results of post-workshop evaluations shown in the graph above.
 | Land & Water Australia's new website went live in June 2006. The content management system delivers an even more functional, informative, and easy to use web interface that works much more efficiently for keeping all parts of the site up to date and decentralising content management across the Corporation, while maintaining quality control and managing risk. With the site's improved usability and search capacity we expect increased traffic over 2006-07 - exceeding the 766 visits per day and 150,000 downloads annually that we achieved in 2005-06.
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In recognition of the importance of sharing knowledge and encouraging adoption of research outcomes a very popular edition of RipRap focused on NRM knowledge management issues.
Land & Water Australia entered into an agreement with the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to manage a $5.4 million, three year, R&D component of the Defeating theWeed Menace program with the aim of generating new knowledge to prevent the development of new weed problems, reduce the impact of existing weeds of national priority, and build capacity for the management of weeds into the future. An initial call for research occurred in June 2006.
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