Additional trials to support development of a national framework for the assessment of river health (FARWH) in Queensland
Project details
| Objective: | To contribute to the development of the Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS) national framework for the assessment of river and wetland health and improve its national applicability. |
| Funding: | up to $1,350,000 plus applicable GST from the Australian Government towards cost associated with supporting the work program. Total value of the project is $1,850,000 with $500,000 being contributed by the Queensland Government. |
| Jurisdiction: | Queensland |
| Commenced: | October 2007 |
| Completed: | December 2010 |
About the project
This project will facilitate the take up and adoption of a key Australian Water Resources 2005 (AWR 2005) product, by building on the National Framework for the Assessment of River and Wetland Health (FARWH) and improve its national applicability. FARWH is a broadscale monitoring framework, which when complete and operational, will have the capacity to accept data from all of the states in Australia and based on that data, provide a statement of ecological status or condition which is comparable across all jurisdictions. Trials of FARWH have already been carried out in Victoria and Tasmania. This project would trial the FARWH over four different ecosystems types in Queensland, including: South-east Queensland; Central Queensland; Lake Eyre Basin; and, the Wet Tropics.
These trial areas are representative of different ecological and geoclimatic environments and include a range of broadscale monitoring and assessment programs. This work will examine correlations or redundancies with the existing regional assessment frameworks as well as determining the overall applicability of FARWH. The results of this project will link into future river and wetland health reporting frameworks under the Australian Water Resource Information System (AWRIS).
Project benefits
This project will advance the Raising National Water Standards priority for water dependent ecosystems of integrating monitoring processes and systems to assist in enhancing aquatic ecosystem knowledge. The proposal further aligns to the National Water Initiative (NWI), by addressing several NWI objectives. They include:
- Objective (iii) - statutory provision for environmental and other public benefit outcomes, and improved environmental management practices
- Objective (iv) - complete the return of all currently over allocated or overused systems to environmentally sustainable levels of extraction.
The project is also consistent with key recommendations of the NWI Biennial Assessment. Recommendation 1.4 recommends:
- the development of "nationally coordinated actions to improve and harmonise river health and groundwater ecosystem monitoring and assessment to enable the states to incorporate information from this monitoring into their adaptive management frameworks."