Vulnerability of Ecological Condition to the Sequencing of Wet and Dry Spells Prior to and during the Murray-Darling Basin Millennium Drought
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 144, Issue 8
Abstract
Droughts are a significant stressor for water supply systems and freshwater ecosystems. Studies on drought risks and impacts have focused on the frequency, duration, and severity of droughts. While these metrics may be appropriate for understanding the risks to consumptive water supply because they directly relate to deficits in catchment yields, they are insufficient to represent risks to ecosystems whose conditions are highly dependent on the sequencing of particular flow events. This paper explores the importance of differing sequences of wet and dry spells preceding and within a recorded drought period to water management objectives. A number of hydrological scenarios were developed by systematically making modest adjustments to the input hydrological sequences on an annual basis. A case study of the Murray Region (Australia) shows that sequencing of wet and dry spells both preceding and within a drought can have substantial influences on ecological outcomes during the drought period. This has implications for developing scenarios for assessing climate change risks, highlighting the importance of both traditional drought indices and the natural variability of hydrological sequences.
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Acknowledgments
The majority of this research was funded by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, and some financial support was provided by the Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP130100174). Murray Peel is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT120100130). The Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (Victoria) provided access to the water resource models and data for this project. We would like to acknowledge the Authority staff for the time that they spent discussing modeling approaches and challenges for the project. The final form of this paper has greatly benefited from detailed comments provided by two anonymous reviewers.
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Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 144 • Issue 8 • August 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 5, 2017
Accepted: Feb 12, 2018
Published online: Jun 13, 2018
Published in print: Aug 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Nov 13, 2018
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