Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Murrumbidgee River system: Optimisation models for improved water management

In this report we develop ecological response models for the Murrumbidgee floodplain that summarise the current understanding of the system’s requirements, inter-annual dynamics, and anticipated short and long-term responses of its key ecological components to management actions, namely environmental flows. We use ecological data collected between 2014 – 2020 and remotely sensed data on floodplain inundation between 1989-2020.
Developed models aim to capture the cause-and-effect processes that underpin ecosystems responses, by identifying key drivers that enable predicting ecological responses, as well as explicitly identify uncertainties in current knowledge and capacity for accurate predictions, driving future monitoring priorities.