The Murray Darling Basin Current is currently in drought. There are low
water levels in most dams, and increased uncertainty about future rainfall. As a result
management of the ecosystems in the basin that depend on river flows involves some
hard decisions about what assets to save and what assets to let go. This paper models
this triage problem using a stochastic and dynamic programming approach. This
model is used to identify how optimal management is affected by hysteretic and
irreversible effects of drought on ecosystem assets and uncertainty about future
climate