- Title
- Assessing change in floodplain wetland condition in the Murray Darling Basin
- Creator
- Gell, Peter; Reid, Michael
- Date
- 2014
- Type
- Text; Conference paper
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/100508
- Identifier
- vital:10555
- Identifier
- http://library.federation.edu.au/record=b2188243
- Abstract
- Lowland Australian rivers and their floodplains have been affected by the progressive introduction of agriculture, flow regulation and invasive exotic species for more than a century. In the context of this complex suite of stressors, our capacity to understand and mitigate the causes of ecosystem change is limited by the lack of historical records of the condition of ecosystems over the past 200 to 300 years. However, records of change over this critical time period can be established through analysis of sedimentary records. Such records can be used to provide benchmarks of the range of natural conditions prior to European settlement and, by providing a long time series of conditions, enhanced capacity to detect trends and trajectories of change. Over the past two decades, more than 50 sediment records from billabongs, lagoons and waterholes throughout the Murray-Darling Basin have been subject to palaeoecological analysis. The picture that emerges from these studies is of ecosystems that have undergone substantial ecological change in response to human activities; however, there are also intriguing differences in the timing and nature of change experienced by aquatic ecosystems in different parts of the Murray-Darling Basin. These patterns of ecosystem response appear to reflect underlying differences in the resilience of these ecosystems in relation to different anthropogenic stressors, which, in turn, may result in contrasting hydrologic, geomorphologic and climatic contexts. This paper presents an attempt to systematically compile and summarise the palaeoecological evidence of change in the aquatic ecosystems of the Murray-Darling Basin and, in so doing, shed light on what the principal drivers of change are in floodplain wetlands across the basin, and hence provide guidance as to how these systems can be best preserved and restored.
- Publisher
- Federation University Australia
- Relation
- Symposium on Australia-China Wetland Network Research Partnership; Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGLAS) Nanjing, China; 23rd-28th December 2014 p. 27-35
- Rights
- Copyright © 2014 Federation University Australia
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Wetlands; Murray River; Salinity; Regime shift; Sediments
- Full Text
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