Estuary environmental flows assessment methodology : final specification report

This report provides a consistent and systematic approach to the determination of environmental water requirements for estuaries in Victoria.Victoria&rsquo;s limited water resources are subject to competing demands. These demands, including town water supplies and irrigation requirements, often deplete the flow entering estuaries and put their environmental values at risk.The Estuary Environmental Flows Assessment Methodology (EEFAM) is a standard methodology which can be applied in a consistent manner across all Victorian estuaries, according to their priority. It is not anticipated that this method would be used for the Gippsland Lakes or Port Phillip or Western Port Bay.<br /

Simple large wood structures promote hydromorphological heterogeneity and benthic macroinvertebrate diversity in low-gradient rivers

This work has been carried out within the SMART Joint Doctorate Programme ‘Science for the MAnagement of Rivers and their Tidal systems’ funded by the Erasmus Mundus programme of the European Union

An adaptive ant colony optimization framework for scheduling environmental flow management alternatives under varied environmental water availability conditions

Human water use is increasing and, as such, water for the environment is limited and needs to be managed efficiently. One method for achieving this is the scheduling of environmental flow management alternatives (EFMAs) (e.g., releases, wetland regulators), with these schedules generally developed over a number of years. However, the availability of environmental water changes annually as a result of natural variability (e.g., drought, wet years). To incorporate this variation and schedule EFMAs in a operational setting, a previously formulated multiobjective optimization approach for EFMA schedule development used for long-term planning has been modified and incorporated into an adaptive framework. As part of this approach, optimal schedules are updated at regular intervals during the planning horizon based on environmental water allocation forecasts, which are obtained using artificial neural networks. In addition, the changes between current and updated schedules can be minimized to reduce any disruptions to longterm planning. The utility of the approach is assessed by applying it to an 89km section of the River Murray in South Australia. Results indicate that the approach is beneficial under a range of hydrological conditions and an improved ecological response is obtained in a operational setting compared with previous longterm approaches. Also, it successfully produces trade-offs between the number of disruptions to schedules and the ecological response, with results suggesting that ecological response increases with minimal alterations required to existing schedules. Overall, the results indicate that the information obtained using the proposed approach potentially aides managers in the efficient management of environmental water.J. M. Szemis, H. R. Maier, and G. C. Dand

Finding space for flowing water in Japan's densely populated landscapes

With its rapidly flowing rivers and plentiful summer rainfall, 20th-century Japan has a history of frequent flooding. The effects on its densely populated flood plains have often been devastating. Japan also has one of the world's landscapes most heavily covered in concrete. In recent decades, however, the Japanese state has turned hesitantly to new techniques of releasing of water into the sea buttressed by a concern for ecological well-being. Its 'nature-oriented' river landscaping programme is an attempt to find a more sustainable balance between flowing water and the built terrain, allowing water to make space for itself. Our paper sets this programme in its historical context, relating it back to the premodern period and juxtaposing it to prevalent modernist 20th-century practice. Throughout this paper, we focus on the interweaving of discourse and practice, drawing attention to the 'idiom' of river landscaping as well as to the role of the state in defining this idiom. We argue that a sort of reconciliation is occurring between the contrasting discourses and practices of 'hard' and 'green' engineers

Strategies in the 2D numerical modelling of wood transport in rivers

In recent years the improvements in computational capacity and the advances in numerical modelling techniques have produced a significant increase in the type of river processes that can be studied with the support of numerical models. Water quality and sediment transport are some of these processes, and it also applies to the case of wood transport. In the last five years several publications have proven the utility of numerical modelling of wood transport for predicting and better understanding wood dynamics, analyzing the influence of wood on flow conditions, and the interactions with infrastructures, and for including this phenomenon in the flood risk assessment. Besides these studies, numerical modelling of wood in rivers is still challenging, and different strategies can be used. We present and discuss some details of numerical strategies used in the simulation of wood transport within a 2D hydrodynamic model based on the finite volume method.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version