MD-WERP Theme: Environmental Outcomes
MD-WERP Research Question: How can we predict the health of aquatic ecosystems and their response to changes in flow?
Project Title: Predicting change in floodplain habitat availability at the Basin scale
Research Lead: La Trobe University and Griffith University
The project aimed to understand how spatial and temporal factors influence floodplain inundation across the Basin.
This study mapped the spatial and temporal distribution of inundation in two key floodplain habitat types: River Red Gum Forest and Lignum shrub land habitat. Relationships between these floodplain habitat types and flow, rainfall and broad scale catchment variables were quantified using a gradient boosting decision tree algorithm.
This information was used to predict how different floodplain habitat types may respond to changes in flow under three different flow scenarios (a flow scenario under a dry climate, a flow scenario under a wet climate and flows that would occur under a without development (WOD) scenario).