×F4. Modelling to evaluate outcomes of environmental watering

In many countries, the prioritisation of water for industry (e.g. irrigation, mining) has resulted in significant and often irreversible decline of the riverine system providing and delivering that water. In Australia, especially in the food bowl of the Murray-Darling Basin, governments have sought to rebalance water allocation in several ways – including reducing demand through efficiencies in water use, and explicit allocation of water to the environment through what is often termed ‘environmental flows’ or ‘environmental watering’. This is a multi-disciplinary issue with temporal, spatial, cultural and symbiotic complexities – and models and assessment frameworks play a key role in being able to navigate these complexities. This session welcomes papers that describe models and modelling approaches that attempt to quantify the outcomes of environmental watering on the environment. Papers that describe models that include attempts to integrate outcomes across ecosystem niches, especially welcome.

Key topics: Environmental flows, Ecological response modelling, Ecological assessment frameworks