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Regional Response to Climate Change Revegetation Action Plan, 2003
Within the North Central region, the North Central Catchment Management Authority (CMA) and the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) have initiated a response to climate change by developing the Regional Response to Climate Change - Native Revegetation Action, which involves sequestering carbon through revegetation and changing land use.
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| Wattle seedling ready for planting. |
This mechanism is seen as a key tool for funding land use change and revegetation that will not only establish carbon sinks, but also complement the aims of a range of other natural resource management plans.
The Regional Response to Climate Change Revegetation Action Plan is an innovative approach that seeks to:
- raise awareness of climate change and its implications
- promote the role of native vegetation carbon sinks
- use carbon sequestration as a means of integrating the outcomes and resources of native vegetation programs
- support landholders to adopt and manage native vegetation carbon sinks
- facilitate investment in carbon sinks revegetation projects
- develop partnerships to increase regional carbon sinks capacity.
The target audiences of this plan included potential investors, landholders, policy makers and staff of the North Central CMA, DPI and Department of Sustainability and Environment who were involved in implementing regional native vegetation programmes, including forest plantation programmes.
Climates, Catchments and Communities Conference, 2004
The North Central CMA hosted this major regional conference, which attracted over 180 delegates and a range of keynote speakers including Steve Morton (CSIRO SE*), Andrew Campbell (Land Water Australia*), and Mike Young (CSIRO Land and Water*).
* Keynote speaker's organisation at the time of the conference
Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation in North Central Victoria, 2006
This project brought together key Natural Resource Management (NRM) agencies to share information and to discuss how to best tackle climate change at a regional scale. A number of forums were held and have resulted in the development of key partnerships and the identification and implementation of future climate change projects.
Current Projects
Practical Adaptation to Climate Change in Regional NRM, 2007
This project is funded by the Australian Greenhouse Office and managed by Craig Clifton of Sinclair Knight Merz and involves six NRM regions across south east Australia. The project uses participatory approaches to help improve understanding of climate change issues and to develop practical responses and approaches for intergrating those responses into regional NRM planning, investment and delivery programmes.
The North Central CMA case study focused on the impact of climate change on water security in the Campaspe Basin. In August 2007 we held a workshop to review climate change model outputs for the Campaspe Basin, and discuss what this meant for water security and current and future activities in the basin. Workshop attendees included representatives from Coliban Water, Goulburn Murray Water, Bendigo City Council, Department of Sustainability and Environment, Department of Primary Industries, and Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance.
A copy of the final report will be available soon.
Ecosystem Risk - Impacts of Climate Change
Background
The North Central Catchment Management Authority (CMA) is one of several partners in a project entitled 'Ecosystem Risk - Impact of Climate Change'. This project aims to assess the impact of climate change on key terrestrial vegetation communities in Victoria, and develop risk assessment methodology and decision tools to help guide adaptation actions. This research is being undertaken in collaboration with other Victorian CMA's, Department of Sustainability and Environment, Arthur Rylah Institute, Charles Sturt University, Australian National University, and CSIRO.
This project is funded through 2007/2008 NAP and NHT, and is due to be completed by the end of June 2008.
There are three main components to this project.
- Development of spatial model to show current and predicted future distributions of Victorian terrestrial vegetation communities in response to climate change. The model output will help us in assessing how vulnerable or resilient Victoria's vegetation communities are to climate change. The vegetation communities will be based on structural types e.g., mallees, tree eucalypts (box gum grassy woodlands) and Buloke/Belah. The spatial model will include data on climate, topography, soil, surface/ground water. This work is being conducted by Arthur Rylah Institute.
- Social research will be conducted to gather information on how landholders perceive and manage risk and climate change. This research will better inform us about how and what to communicate to landholders and what mechanisms we could use to assist/inform the landholder on how to build resilience of native vegetation communities. This research is being conducted by Charles Sturt University.
- Compilation of knowledge and population of a preliminary Bayesian Decision Network (BDN) that identifies relationships, causal links, data, and assumptions. Future workshops will be conducted utilising and refining BDN - as a decision support tool, information transfer, training, and awareness raising tool. This work is being conducted by North Central CMA and Australian National University.
Workshop 9 November 2007
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| Workshop Presentations |
The workshop presentations showcased the proposed research methodology and provided opportunity for interaction and discussion.
Dr Graeme Newel (ARI) presented "Climate Change: impacts on biodiversity and risks to ecosystems"; Dr Rik Thwaites (CSU) presented "Understanding rural landholder adaptation/responses to climate variability"; and Dr Jenifer Ticehurst (ANU) presented "Introduction to Bayesian Decision Networks"
In the afternoon the attendees formed groups and worked on developing influence diagrams around the question "How resilient are the grassy woodlands in the Muckleford zone to 2030 climate change scenario?" . These influence diagrams will contribute towards building a decision support tool, specifically using Bayesian Decision Network (BDN)
Presentations and Workshop diagrams
- Climate Change: impacts on biodiversity and risks to ecosystems
- Understanding rural landholder adaptation/responses to climate variability
- Introduction to Bayesian Decision Networks
- Bayesian Network Workshop
- Workshop Influence Diagrams/Bayesian Networks
- Workshop Influence Diagrams/Bayesian Networks Consolidated
Climate Change in Irrigated Landscapes - Research, Development and Knowledge
This project aims to build a detailed conceptual framework that summarises the effect of climate change on irrigated landscapes. This project is in the preliminary planning stages.
We will be regularly updating this website to provide you with the latest information and progress reports on these current initiatives as they become available.