Predicting floodplain habitat inundation...
URL: https://www.mdba.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/predicting-floodplain-habitat-inundation-throughout-mdb-inform-management-environmental-flows.pdf
Authors: Leigh Gould (Griff), Ben Stewart-Koster (Griff), Gabrielle Hunt (MDBA), Mark Kennard (Griff), Fran Sheldon (Griff)
The project aimed to understand how spatial and temporal factors influence floodplain inundation across the Murray–Darling 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).
Key findings / recommendations:
-
While important, flow is not the only determinant of floodplain inundation. Physical catchment characteristics, alongside levels of anthropogenic disturbance, are also important predictors of floodplain inundation. This suggests that environmental flow planning should occur within the context of the surrounding catchment.
-
By influencing the skew of the hydrograph, alterations to flows in the mid-low hydrograph may have a large impact on floodplain inundation.
-
Floodplain ecosystems in the northwest of the Basin may be at risk of habitat loss under a dry climate flow scenario.
-
Catchment development including dams, weirs and water extraction has a large effect on floodplain inundation, however the effects of catchment development on floodplain inundation may differ between the north and the south of the Basin.
You can copy and paste the embed code into a CMS or blog software that supports raw HTML