Murdoch University

– Water Policy
– Water resource management,
– Irrigation and land management,
– Sustainable agriculture,
– Urban water management,
– Hydrologic research,
– Social-ecological systems,
– Climate change adaptation,
– Environmental governance and diplomacy,
– Coastal/delta management

• Environmental Insecurity Risks in the Indo-Pacific

The project involved three themes: Theme 1: The changing scale and rate of natural hazards in the Indo-Pacific Region and the differential impact on the national social, economic, and political stability of countries. Theme 2: Food security and political security implications of pests and diseases affecting plant and animal production in the Indo-Pacific Region’ Theme 3: Emerging diseases and management responses across the Indo-Pacific Region.

• Water and Carbon Management in Forested Watersheds

Held an international Workshop on water and carbon management in forested watersheds in Hanoi. The workshop was focused on the improvement and dissemination of knowledge and understanding of methods, policies and technologies for increasing the sustainable water and carbon management of forested watersheds across south-east Asia.

• Social-Ecological Interdependence in Transboundary Water Resources Systems

Risk management has reduced vulnerability to floods and droughts globally 1,2, yet their impacts are still increasing. An improved understanding of the causes of changing impacts is therefore needed but has been hampered by a lack of empirical data. On the basis of a global dataset of 45 pairs of events that occurred within the same area, we show that risk management generally reduces the impacts of floods and droughts but faces difficulties in reducing the impacts of unprecedented events of a magnitude not previously experienced. If the second event was much more hazardous than the first, its impact was almost always higher.

• Assessment of Climate Change Impact and Upstream Development on Downstream in the Lower Brahmaputra River Basin (ACCURACY)

This study investigated the effect of climate change on both low and high flows of the lower Brahmaputra. We apply a novel method of discharge-weighted ensemble modelling using model outputs from global hydrological models forced with 12 different global climate models (GCMs). Our analysis shows that only a limited number of GCMs are required to reconstruct observed discharge. Based on the GCM outputs and long-term records of observed flow at Bahadurabad station, our method results in a multi-model weighted ensemble of transient stream flow for the period 1961–2100. Using the constructed transients, we subsequently project future trends in low and high river flow. The analysis shows that extreme low flow conditions are likely to occur less frequently in the future. However, a very strong increase in peak flows is projected, which may, in combination with projected sea level change, have devastating effects on Bangladesh.

• Interdisciplinary discourse on climate change adaptation (IDCCA): a local response to extreme events in Asian transboundary river basins

Interdisciplinary discourse on climate change adaptation (IDCCA): a local response to extreme events in Asian transboundary river basins.

• Social-Ecological Interdependencies in Dynamic COAST (SECURE-COAST)

This study diagnosed temporal and spatial variations in the performance of different social-ecological systems (SES) in coastal floodplain management in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta. New approaches, such as the recent development of the diagnostic framework, the guiding questions for defining focal SES, and the application of the framework to local public goods, can potentially be used in the fields of sustainability science and SES science. The qualitative performance of each of the selected indicators is useful for identifying intervention options to achieve a sustainable outcome for the coastal floodplain SES.