A flood-ravaged Townsville has captured public attention, highlighting the vulnerability of many of our cities to flooding. The extraordinary amount of rain is just one aspect of the disaster in Queensland’s third-biggest…
The Darling River is simply not supposed to dry out, even in drought
The deaths of a million of fish in the lower Darling River system over the past few weeks should come as no surprise. Quite apart from specific warnings given to…
Taking the cow piss out of our waterways
If carbon is added to paddocks where cows urinate it can reduce the runoff of nitrogen into waterways meaning more nutrients for pasture growth and cleaner creeks and rivers. This…
Farmer ‘nitrogen market’ could reduce runoff impact on Great Barrier Reef
A team of economists and scientists led by Dr Jim Smart from the Australian Rivers Institute have found a ‘nitrogen trading scheme’ amongst cane farmers could help protect the Great Barrier…
A One-Stop Shop for Riparian Vegetation Management
The vegetation that grows alongside creeks and rivers, known as the riparian–zone, is one of our most valuable ecosystems. Dr Samantha Capon from Griffith University’s Australian Rivers Institute (ARI) has…
Securing Australia’s food & water systems
Understanding and addressing environmental and social risks Australians share a deep relationship with our land and water, one that includes Indigenous connections to country, cultural associations that derive from a history…
Whale of a lab
How does Antarctica, the coldest driest and most remote continent on earth come to be polluted industrial chemicals and pesticides likes DDT, PCBs or dioxins, some of which were already…
Watch out, Australia: a red-hot summer means blue-green algae
As the Bureau of Meteorology has already warned us, Australia is in for a hot, dry summer as the current El Niño takes hold. Those conditions are ideal for blue-green…
Turning salt water into energy
Can the saline water from the desalination process be used to generate power? According to new research harnessing the energy created from salinity gradients — for example, when freshwater meets…
Smart water metering: saving water and money
A range of external factors have placed an increasing responsibility on water utilities to adopt more sustainable approaches to urban water management, as the era of readily accessible and inexpensive…