Assessing the sensitivity of water resources in the Murray–Darling to fire and climate change

MD-WERP Theme: Climate Adaptation

MD-WERP Theme 1 Project: Climate Adaptation Foundational Science

Research Lead: CSIRO

Climate change projections indicate that conditions conducive to bushfires are expected to become worse in the future. Historically, fires have been shown to have short- and long-term impacts on catchment runoff and hence water availability. However, how the consequences of projected increases in the severity of fire weather impacted on projected runoff is poorly understood.

This study investigated the potential impacts of bushfires on water availability under a changing climate for more than 100 catchments in the Basin. Modelling methods were established that relate:

1. climate data to fire weather,
2. fire weather to the area of forest burnt and changes in leaf area index (LAI) due to bushfire,
3. post-fire recovery of LAI, and finally,
4. catchment runoff to LAI.

Runoff projections generated using these methods were compared to those generated using more traditional modelling methods that do not consider the effects of bushfires.