The national Lifetimewool project: a journey in evaluation

The national Lifetimewool project commenced in 2001 and was funded until 2008. The objective of this project was to develop practical grazing management guidelines that would enable wool growers throughout Australia to increase lifetime production of wool per hectare from ewes. The project achieved its ambitious target of influencing 3000 producers to change their management of ewe flocks by adoption (or part thereof) of Lifetimewool messages and guidelines by 2008. The present paper focuses specifically on the evaluation work that was conducted on the project between 2003 and 2008. It is a noteworthy journey because it provides a case study of the effective implementation of an evaluation plan. The Lifetimewool project used 'people-centred evaluation' to help guide the creation of an internal evaluation plan. The six core principles followed were: participation; program logic, a people-centred focus; multiple lines of evidence; reflection and learning and a clearly documented and resourced evaluation plan. These principles were applied from the onset of the project. The Lifetimewool team used the evaluation findings to refine the initial design. Based on learnings from their evaluation journey, they created and modified the extension and communications components of the project. The present paper contends that the evaluation process itself enabled the project team to plan and adjust the course of the project through evidence-based reflection and that this helped ensure that the targets were achieved and demonstrated

Geometric and kinematic controls on the internal structure of a large normal fault in massive limestones : the Maghlaq Fault, Malta

The Maghlaq Fault is a large, left-stepping normal fault (displacement >210 m) cutting the Oligo-Miocene pre- to syn-rift carbonates of SW Malta. Two principal slip zones separate the deformed rocks of the fault zone from the undeformed wall rocks. Fault rocks derived from fully lithified, pre- to early syn-rift sediments comprise relatively continuous fine-grained veneers of cataclasite and localised fault-bound lenses of wall rock, occurring over a range of scales, which are commonly brecciated. The lenses result from the linkage of slip surfaces, the inclusion of asperities and the formation of Riedel shears within the fault zone. In contrast, fault rock incorporated from unlithified syn-rift sediments comprise relatively continuous veils of rock that deformed in a ductile manner. Anomalously thick parts of the fault zone with highly complex structure and content are associated with breached relay zones, branch-lines and bends; these structures represent progressive stages of fault segment linkage. The progressive evolution and bypassing of fault zone complexities to form a smoother and more continuous active fault surface, results in complex fault rock distributions within the fault zone. Segment linkage structures have high fracture densities which combined with their significant vertical extents suggest they are potentially important up-fault fluid flow conduits.Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and TechnologyENI Exploration and Production Divisio