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| Gregory River, Queensland (credit: Bob Beale) |
May 19, 2009
Research has discovered flow regimes in Australia's rivers follow twelve distinct patterns, suggesting that insights and lessons learnt in one river or region can be validly transferred to another that follows the same pattern.
In a project funded by Land & Water Australia's Innovation Program, Dr Brad Pusey of Griffith University and team developed a continental-scale regional classification of Australia’s rivers based on ecologically relevant aspects of their hydrology.
The information gathered in the project will benefit aquatic scientists and natural resource managers alike. A well-defined hydrological classification/regionalisation framework provides an objective framework to help improve our understanding of the relationship between hydrology and ecology. Fundamentally useful for regionally relevant analyses of environmental flows and for examining changes in flow regimes, the findings could also link with a range of other studies, including those related to ecosystem production or foodweb dynamics, distribution of biodiversity, and spatial variation in ecological traits.
The project has also added a spatial framework of streams and nested catchments and a data matrix of hydrological units by landscape attributes, to the 9 second Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of Australia.
Research has discovered flow regimes in Australia's rivers follow twelve distinct patterns, suggesting that insights and lessons learnt in one river or region can be validly transferred to another that follows the same pattern.
In a project funded by Land & Water Australia's Innovation Program, Dr Brad Pusey of Griffith University and team developed a continental-scale regional classification of Australia’s rivers based on ecologically relevant aspects of their hydrology.
The information gathered in the project will benefit aquatic scientists and natural resource managers alike. A well-defined hydrological classification/regionalisation framework provides an objective framework to help improve our understanding of the relationship between hydrology and ecology. Fundamentally useful for regionally relevant analyses of environmental flows and for examining changes in flow regimes, the findings could also link with a range of other studies, including those related to ecosystem production or foodweb dynamics, distribution of biodiversity, and spatial variation in ecological traits.
The project has also added a spatial framework of streams and nested catchments and a data matrix of hydrological units by landscape attributes, to the 9 second Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of Australia.
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