Forests, fire and vegetation change impacts on Murray-Darling basin water resources

The Murray-Darling River system is perhaps Australia’s most important, with significant social, cultural and environmental values including 16 Ramsar listed wetlands. The MDB is home to 2.6 million people and produces about $24 billion worth in agricultural production each year (about one-third of total value for Australia). Hydrologic issues, typified by water availability and quality, have existed for many years, peaking during the Millennium drought from 1997 to 2010. Competing interests (i.e. irrigation, tourism, environmental heath), and the declining flows and water quality during droughts, led governments and water management agencies to consider the risks to water resources in the system in the early-mid 2000s. This paper reviews changes to risks associated with forest dynamics, as identified by - afforestation and bushfire–and considers new issues that have emerged since that analysis. It was found that the potential impacts of bushfire on stream flows were over-estimated in past studies, and that a planned significant afforestation expansion into agricultural and grazing land that was projected to reduce stream flows did not occur. While these two risks now do not seem likely to have significant future impacts on flows, or consequent effects on downstream users, the interaction of elevated CO2 and increasing temperatures on vegetation functioning and subsequent hydrologic consequences at catchment scale require further research and analysis. Reduced rainfall and increased temperatures under future climate change are likely to have an impact on inputs and flows. Uncertainties in how these changes, and feedbacks between climate, drought, more frequent fire and vegetation responses, impact on system hydrology also require further investigation.