 The
Goulburn Broken Catchment, Victoria
Final report now available Natrual
Values: Exploring Options for Enhancing Ecosystem Services in
the Goulburn Broken Catchment 
5.5MB or Executive
Summary Only 476 Kb
The work in the Goulburn Broken is funded by the Myer Foundation
and Land and Water Australia and this aspect of the case study
is due for completion in May 2003. It aims to:
- Estimate the values of selected ecosystem services as a
way to help the Catchment Management Authority take account
of the interrelationships among a wider range of ecological,
economic and social values at scales from local to regional.
(Inventory)
- Work with a wide range of policy makers, planners, land
managers, industry and community groups to raise awareness
of the values of maintaining ecosystem functions, to develop
recommendations for policies and practices that maintain these
values, and to enhance both uptake of present policies and
practices and implementation of new ones. (Communication)
- Develop and promote the project outputs for application
elsewhere, as one possible national approach to assist sound
resource management. (Modelling and Scenarios)
We are working with a cross section of the community,
coordinated by the Goulburn
Broken Catchment Authority. The project started with an inventory
to determine:
- What products are produced from the catchment.
- What natural assets are transformed to provide these products.
- What ecosystem services are involved in transforming the assets
into the products.
This inventory provided a basis for an interactive process of
biophysical modelling, development of scenarios and options for
the future of the catchment, and economic valuation, all done
in collaboration with the community. Ecosystem
services are so prolific that prioritization and focus must precede
research. The inventory process focused us upon four components:
- ‘Double the production on half the land’
in the Goulburn Broken Catchment as a whole.
- Ecosystem services from the Lower Goulburn
Floodplain.
- Services from Sheep Pen Creek catchment.
- Services from the Upper Goulburn Catchment.
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Whole of Catchment Study
We are working on an input-output model that links water and
nutrient use to employment, gross regional product, and regional
economic structure. It is designed to answer questions about the
economic and employment impacts of land use intensification ('double
the production on half the land'). The economic input-output table
is completed. We are now working on the economic-physical model.
 The
Lower Goulburn Floodplain
The Catchment Management Authority proposes to move the levees
and allow the floodplain to resume some of its pre-1916 functions.
We have built a dynamic model of the floodplain that estimates
changes in the delivery of services that include forage for livestock,
water filtration, nutrients for crops, carbon storage, and the
growth of native vegetation for conservation. The model is not
pinpoint accurate, but its strength is in its ability to estimate
changes over time in these ecosystem services.
Particularly innovative is the ability to estimate changes in
'habitat hectares' scores of patches of native vegetation as its
structural complexity increases under protection. The model is
able to estimate changes in gross margins from crops and grazing
under different land use assumptions.
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Sheep Pen Creek
We are building a spatial model for estimating changes in ecosystem
services if Sheep Pen Creek sub-catchment is re-vegetated. The
re-vegetation is driven in the model by rules reflecting CMA and
NRE policies. The model is spatially fine-grained, but works in
coarse time-steps. Alternative scenarios are evaluated in terms
of the ability of the vegetation of the catchment to regulate
water tables and water quality, yield water, store carbon, conserve
biodiversity and make money. The main innovative feature is the
ability of the model to build patterns of vegetation across the
landscape to increase the connectivity of remnant vegetation,
thus its conservation value, an idea tested at whole of catchment
scale by NRE.
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Upper Goulburn Catchment
The analysis of ecosystem services relevant to recreation and
tourism activities in the upper catchment has been based on the
assessment of different options for recreation and tourism designed
by catchment stakeholders. The options were developed to show
a broad range of possibilities for activities in the upper catchment.
An impact matrix has been completed using expert opinion to show
how ecosystem services and other criteria change under these options.
Experts were consulted from organisations including Goulburn-Murray
Water (GMW), Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment
(NRE) Forests, NRE Catchment and Water Division, Mt. Buller Resort,
Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority (GBCMA) and CSIRO.
Stakeholder input and priorities were assessed using a deliberative
approach (stakeholder jury) combined with decision aiding software.
Six jurors were chosen to represent a range of stakeholder organisations
(GBCMA, Upper Goulburn Implementation Committee/Mansfield Council,
Waterways Strategy Implementation Committee, NRE, City of Greater
Shepparton and Parks Victoria). Priorities of the various decision
criteria were provided by the jurors by mail out questionnaire
prior to the jury. Expert witnesses were brought in for the jury
process to present information and to answer questions from the
jurors on those criteria which had wide disparities in priorities.
These experts covered water issues, social issues, soil erosion,
jobs and economic issues. After the expert witnesses presented
their cases, the jurors were asked again to give their priorities
for the various decision criteria. Discussion and deliberation
on still contentious criteria followed, and, after sufficient
consensus was reached on the weighting of the criteria, and with
the aid of the software, a favoured option (the 'sustainable mixed
strategy') was agreed. The Stakeholder Jury process was well received
by the participants.
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Communication
Communications with our stakeholders in the Goulburn Broken have
maintained the relevance of the research to local needs and provided
sources of much local and technical knowledge. Each component
of the Goulburn Broken sub-project is based around workshops with
stakeholders. Our communications strategy was revised in January
2002, and our new website launched in February, when we also took
over a whole issue of RipRap.
Communication has been the main success of the project. The ecosystem
service concept has entered he vocabulary of politicians and is
being turned into policies at state and federal levels. Our communicators
can claim much of the credit for this. The challenge to our researchers
is to complete research of sufficient substance and quality to
justify the high profile of the project.
Project stakeholders
Ecosystem Services Project Steering Committee:
| Dianne McPherson |
Chair |
| Bill O'Kane |
CEO GBCMA |
| Pat O'Connor |
Land owner |
| Mike Young |
CSIRO Land and Water |
| Nick Abel |
CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems |
| Rob Floyd |
CSIRO Entomology |
| Neil Byron |
Productivity Commission |
| Charles Lane |
The Myer Foundation |
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