Plantations and Water Roundtable Actions and Outcomes
The following actions were identified as key outcomes of the Plantations and Water Roundtable and recommended as the major tasks to be undertaken:
1. Establish an industry working group on Plantations and Water (29th April).
2. Release summary of the Roundtable meeting and make papers available (2nd May).
3. Agreement sought that the draft position statement for the Roundtable would act as the terms of reference for the industry working group on plantations and water.
4. Tree Plantations Australia to draft a list of actions from the Roundtable and the Working Group to agree on plan of action (6th May).
5. Identify the processes for working with relevant people within the State agencies who are responsible for the plantation components of their water policies and the draft implementation plans to be presented to the National Water Commission (NWC). There needs to be additional links provided for people working in the regions, so that appropriate information on plantations and water is provided to catchment managers. Regional groups can coordinate efforts with those working with the State water agencies.
6. For the purposes of the draft implementation plans to be presented to the NWC in mid-2005 and action 4 above, recommend to the relevant State agencies that a simple approach is taken at the present time. That is, plantation forestry is treated in accordance with the principles and objectives of the National Water Initiative (NWI) and there needs to be a clear recognition of the environmental benefits that can be provided by plantations.
7. Investigate options for funding under the Australian Water Fund to develop a framework for undertaking the strategic environmental assessment of water uses (based on an assessment of the economic, social and environmental benefits or impacts) associated with each landuse. This project could be based on the information obtained from the Pratt Water Study for the Murrumbidgee, the social study currently being completed by BRS, and the information that has been collected by some of the Private Forestry Development Committees. It is intended that the framework could be used by catchment managers to establish and potentially re-distribute water entitlements for all landuses within their jurisdictions.
8. Draft a policy, for the broader consideration of industry, on plantation developments for fully, over and under-allocated catchments, in accordance with Clause 57 of the NWI. (How do we find out which catchments are fully, over or under-allocated?)
9. From Discussion Group 1 at the Roundtable, prepare an outline for proceeding with definitions of significant interception, large-scale plantation forestry and other relevant terms from the NWI. Prepare a summary of the proportion of catchments planted to trees (based on the report from BRS, completed in March 2004 and funded by FWPRDC).
10. Determine whether it is possible to produce a relatively simple approach for determining if there is likely to be significant interception from existing and new plantations. Such a model could be indicative and based on the net area planted, the position of those plantations in the landscape, age, species and management options. It is intended that this model could be an indicator of ‘significant interception’ by catchment managers, rather than attempting to estimate the total volume of interception by plantations.
11. Address the question of how plantation forestry should be considered within a joint accounting system for surface and ground water.
12. How should the risk factors for water security, as identified by the Murray Darling Basin Commission, be addressed? What research information is required to help address this matter? Highlight the scale of the other five risk factors being considered by the MDBC in order to put the plantation risk factors for the catchment into perspective (prepare a fact sheet on this?). Consider how the risk factors compare to the potential water savings (as identified in the Pratt Water study).
13. Prepare an options paper on the following matter: If catchments are required to meet end-of-valley targets for salinity, what impact might this have on the industry and what additional benefits or investment options could become available to the industry from the introduction of such targets? Identify the potential water-saving or water-efficiency options for plantation forestry. Identify options for how these water-saving credits could be paid for.
14. Use the results of the work presented by Peter Hairsine to prepare a single-page fact sheet for demonstrating how plantations can decrease the amount of salt reaching streams. (Based on water interception, saline water concentrations rising, but the overall amount of salt being released actually declining across the 10-year period of the Pine Creek experiment; also use the information from the Denmark River catchment in WA and any other known sources of information.)
15. Prepare a fact sheet explaining that not all of the water lost to run-off reduction from plantations would have ended up as the water available for other productive purposes. For example, the Pratt Water study estimates that one-third of water cannot be accounted for in the Murrumbidgee system.
16. Make catchments aware of the recent work from the CRC Catchment Hydrology which indicates where plantations could be established in the Murray-Darling Basin to reduce water salt loads. (fact sheet and broad-scale mapping indications) This information needs to be available for consideration during the preparation of regional NRM plans.
Key research activities
1. Identify the main climate change risks, uncertainty and potential impacts that need to be considered during the plantation sector’s progress with adaptation to climate change.
2. Validate the CRC Catchment Hydrology model for estimating surface water run-off as a function of the position of plantations within the landscape.
3. Summarise known information on water use by other landuse activities, particularly intensive cropping and groundwater extraction, to see how they compare to plantation forestry. This is especially important for intensive cropping, where crops are planted to maximise the use of available rainfall.
4. From the actions above, identify projects that are both innovative and which support NWI implementation as the basis for seeking funding through the Australian Water Fund. What research is required to support the proposition that plantation forestry should be treated in a sector-neutral manner?
5. Identify the environmental trade-offs from plantations and align the environmental services against the use of that water to produce timber resources for industry.
6. Determine whether the risks of zero flow days in a catchment with plantations are the same or ‘significantly different’ to the estimates of zero flow days without plantations.
7. Use the information behind the Zhang and Lu curves to determine the statistical significance in plantation and pasture water use for areas with less than 800mm rainfall. Analyse this information for the 600-700mm rainfall and other suitable rainfall bands. It is important to concentrate on these parts of the curves and to add the error bars.
8. Hold a smaller roundtable with researchers to find out exactly what is happening in regards to water/landuse/vegetation management/plantations as the basis for identifying gaps in our current efforts and knowledge.
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