Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and ...
7th Australian Stream Management Conference - Full Paper
Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands 1
2
Patrick Driver , Peter Lloyd-Jones and Emily Barbour 1.
3
NSW Office of Water, Orange, NSW, Australia and Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW
2.
NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Sydney, NSW, Australia
3.
Oxford University, United Kingdom
Key Points • Environmental flow delivery decision-making requires readily available information. In terms of wetland plants, the reporting focus is usually on groundcover and the health of floodplain trees. • Rapid groundcover assessments of plant diversity are required. A rapid survey method was compared to a more time-consuming quadrat method, and revealed greater species richness. • River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) health was also assessed using historical photographs and wellestablished visual measures, and were found to also indicate health of a nearby reed bed.
Abstract Water Sharing Plans require ecosystem function and diversity to be preserved through river operating rules and their implementation. To aid effective implementation wetland monitoring methods should be rapid, and allow representation of function and diversity over relevant times and space. We consider this for monitoring methods used for environmental flow assessment in Murray Darling wetlands (southeast Australia). Each wetland is unique in terms of species composition, chemistry, geomorphology and flow regime; and all of these measures have unique responses in time and space. This study assesses rapid assessment approaches for groundcover based on previous data and, for river red gums, photos, to inform wetland health for real-time water management. The rapid assessment method records higher plant species richness compared to a more time-consuming transect method; especially in sites with greater species richness. Tree health measures are likely to help assess not just tree health, but the availability of shallow groundwater for deeprooted plant species. Both the tree and rapid groundcover methods produce useful information much more rapidly than other methods commonly employed in the Murray Darling Basin.
Keywords Wetlands, plants, Murray Darling Basin, Monitoring, trees, groundwater
Introduction Wetland methods that are useful within natural resource management are often required to be rapid, and allow representation of function and diversity over relevant times and space (Driver et al. 2013; Gawne et al. 2013). This is the case of monitoring methods used for environmental flow assessment in Murray Darling Basin, Australia. The need for such methods continues in southeast Australia as new monitoring programs partly such as the Commonwealth governments Long Term Intervention Monitoring (LTIM) Program incorporates methods and data from previous programs (Gawne et al. 2013). In this study we consider the efficacy of groundcover plant survey methods for assessing species richness, with the intent of exploring its use within the developing Lachlan LTIM program (Dyer et al. 2014). We compare a rapid, larger area survey method and a more detailed transect method employed within the Lachlan River, New South Wales. Transect work is often more standard in vegetation fieldwork, but it could be less efficient for answering some questions that are required within days or weeks after survey. This work was done as part of the then NSW Governments Integrated Monitoring of Environmental Flow Program (IMEF). This study just focuses on work done under IMEF on the Lachlan River (Driver et al. 2010, 2011, 2013; Chessman et al. 2003). The detail and effort previously employed in this work can no longer be resourced and so methods to simply field methods with resulting, comparable detail are sought in this paper through analysis.
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 133
7ASM Full Paper Driver et. al. – Rapid wetland groundcover appraisal Methods Survey methods developed for IMEF plant survey (Driver et al 2003) included two approaches: 1. A rapid on-ground survey lasting for an hour in an area 100 m long by the width of the wetland (~ 20-30 m); and 2. Assessment of three fixed location transects across the study area, comprising 10 quadrats of size 1 m by 1 m were randomly allocated to the length of each transect (equating to 30 quadrats). Each transect went from bank to bank and was randomly allocated along the length of the wetland at IMEF study inception in 1999 (for more detail on sites, selection and field methods see Chessman et al. 2003). Plants were recorded to species, and where this was uncertain specimens were lodged and verified with the Sydney Herbarium. The transect methods typically took about twice as long as the rapid method. This groundcover survey approach was employed in wetlands near Booligal, southwest New South Wales at three sites; 2 billabongs (Merrimajeel and Erin’s) and one swamp (Booligal Swamp). Tree health was assessed using the canopy condition method by Drew et al (2002), which are very similar earlier methods developed by Grimes (1987). Scores were: 1. Healthy tree; 2. Foliage beginning to die from the tips of the branches, with some thinning or sickness of the leaves and some partly dead branches; 3. As with 2 but with greater loss of foliage and some completely dead branches and 4. Most of the epicormic foliage has died and 5. dead tree. The field method included fixed location photographs, which were used to determine tree health scores. Results from this method were focused on two wetlands within the Great Cumbung Swamp (GCS; Lake Marrool and Lignum Lake), and the results were compared to measures of Phragmites australis biomass in the core reed bed of the GCS. Biomass was a function of area coverage and height observed in the field, is significantly associated with groundwater inflows (described in Driver et al. 2011). Analyses of groundcover and tree data employed regression and Analysis of Variance using Systat (1997). Categorical variables site and year were tested in the first analyses to assess if they were significant effects. Residuals of these analyses were assessed, and transformations applied where required which improved homogeneity of variance.
Results Groundcover There were more species collected under the rapid assessment method than with the transect method, with this trend explaining more than 50% of the patterns observed (Figure 1). Time and site were insignificant effects in the model for transect count when the rapid score was a correlate in the model (N = 8, df = 1, P = 0.025). The transect method on average only recorded 61% of the species that the rapid assessment method recorded. There was also a general trend that as richness went up, the transect method recorded proportionally less of the total richness, with the trend suggesting that only about 50% of species would be recorded in a wetland that had 47 species recorded using the rapid approach (Figure 2). This trend explains a bit more than 70% of the patterns observed after removal of the outlier value of 38% for Erin’s on March 2002 (N = 7, df = 1, P = 0.013).
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 134
7ASM Full Paper Driver et. al. – Rapid wetland groundcover appraisal Table 1. Results of transect versus rapid survey Location
Date of sample
Merrimajeel Merrimajeel Merrimajeel Erin’s Erin’s Booligal Booligal Booligal
6/05/2003 5/03/2002 7/03/2001 8/05/2003 5/03/2002 7/05/2003 4/03/2002 8/03/2001
year
# transect species
# rapid species
%
2003 2002 2001 2003 2002 2003 2002 2001
22 17 15 15 6 17 14 11
38 22 20 28 16 29 32 13
58 77 75 54 38 59 44 85
Species richness with rapid versus transect method 25
Transect method
20 15 10
y = 0.5757x R² = 0.5156
5 0 10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Rapid method
Figure 1. Species richness resulting from transect survey versus rapid survey method
Species richness with rapid versus transect method (as a % )
Transect method as a %
100 90 80 70 60 50 y = -1.4948x + 103.25
40
R2 = 0.7082
30 20 10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Rapid method
Figure 2. % species richness from the transect survey as a percentage of species richness resulting from the rapid survey method
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 135
7ASM Full Paper Driver et. al. – Rapid wetland groundcover appraisal Tree health 126 rows of data were entered, but only 59 observations over three years, and the two lakes were in analyses because of missing values associated with slightly different angles of photograph. These showed a strong regression relationship between the square root of tree health and the square root of reed biomass. The lake or site (within lake) effect son this relationship were not significant, and the time effect was not a significant effect on river red gum health when reed bed biomass was an explanatory variable in the model (N = 59, df = 1, P < 0.001).
5
5
4
4
3
3
RRG _S C
RRG _S C
Figure 3. River Red Gum health scores in the two lakes (left: Lignum Lake, right: Lake Marrol) versus the square-root of Phragmites australis biomass in the Reed Bed.
2 1 0 1
2 1
2
3
4 5 6 7 SQRTREED
8
9 10
0 1
2
3
4 5 6 7 SQRTREED
8
9 10
Discussion and conclusions The methods employed in this study are refinements of existing methods, with the view to reduce field time without losing quality with the type of information that can be used by water committees for decision-making. This study is also aimed to help or complement other studies on river red gum (and other tree species) health in this valley (e.g., Roberts 2007, Barbour et al. 2011, Dyer et al. 2014), and which could benefit from complementary, longer-term data. The significant correlation between red gum health and reed bed biomass is not at all surprising because there is a wellestablished relationship between the shallow aquifer in the GCS and the health of deeper-rooted plant species (Driver et al. 2011). The tightness of the relationship between tree health at the lakes and reed biomass was more than expected, however. This will help assess broader system health when not all locations can be surveyed; in particular, the lakes are relatively easy to access during minor flooding, whereas the reed bed is not. The results from the ground cover analysis are also not surprising because there have been other studies which compare broader area based survey (ocular approaches) to transect analyses. Ocular methods have been found by others to record more species for the same effort, and are also more likely to detect rare species (Godínez-Alvarez et al. 2009). Because other studies use slightly different ocular and transect methods, it is important to locally verify such patterns for specific methods. Other area based methods could be assessed in relation to this IMEF data, and this could aid long-term, as well as short term environmental flow assessment. For example, a 20 x 20 m vegetation assessment method is employed by NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (Bowen 2013). To enable such field approaches to co-exist, this method would also
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 136
7ASM Full Paper Driver et. al. – Rapid wetland groundcover appraisal need calibrating against the transect-based method. Through such an approach different sources of data can be integrated and cross-calibrated for species richness, which then allows development of a longer-term database. Longterm data is essential for the adaptive management cycle that informs short term reporting on environmental flow effectiveness, and also the development and evaluation of Water Sharing Plans (Driver et al. 2013).
Acknowledgments This work was supported by the NSW Office of Water and its predecessors. We thank numerous field workers who have helped collect this data including Chris Higgins, Alastair Mackenzie-McHarg, Michael Longhurst and Suzanne Unthank. Recent enthusiasm to look at this data can be attributed to Sharon Bowen and Fiona Dyer. This work was supported by the University of New South Wales, the Australian National University, the National Centre for Groundwater Research and the NSW Government. Dr. Lance Lloyd provided suggestions which improved the quality of this document. The views expressed in this document are those of the authors and not necessarily that of the NSW Government.
References Barbour, E.J., Driver, P.D., Kuczera, G.A., Blakers, R.S. and Croke, B.F.W. (2011). Optimizing environmental flow rules – a conceptual model. In Chan, F., Marinova, D. and Anderssen, R.S. (eds.) MODSIM2011, 19th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation. Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand, December 2011, pp. 3994-4000. Bowen, S. (2013). NSW OEH Environmental Flow Monitoring Program: Methods for monitoring of flood-dependent vegetation communities. Waters and Rivers Team, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. Chessman, B & 17 other authors (2003). Integrated Monitoring of Environmental Flows State Summary Report 19982000. , NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources. Driver P., Raine A., Foster N. and Williams, S. (2013). Ecological monitoring to support water sharing plan evaluation, and protect wetlands of inland New South Wales, Australia. Ecological Management and Restoration 14, 187-193 Driver, PD, Chowdhury, S, Hameed, T, O'Rourke, M & Shaikh, M (2010). Ecosystem response models for lower Calare (Lachlan River) floodplain wetlands: managing wetland biota and climate change modelling.', in Overton, I & Saintilan, N (eds), Ecosystem response modelling in the Murray-Darling Basin, CSIRO Publishing, Canberra, pp. 18396 Driver, PD, Hardwick, L, Maguire, J & Lloyd-Jones, P (2003). Vegetation Survey for Billabongs. , New South Wales Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources. Driver, PD., Barbour, E. & Michener, K. (2011). An integrated surface water, groundwater and wetland plant model of th drought response and recovery for environmental water management. MODSIM2011, 19 International Congress on Modelling and Simulation Drew, A., Freudenberger, D. and Clayton, M. (2002). Weddin Catchment Biodiversity Assessment. A report for the TARGET project. October 2002. CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Canberra. Dyer, F., Broadhurst, B., Thompson, R., Jenkins, K., Driver, P., Saintilan, N., Bowen, S., Packard, P., Gilligan, D., Brandis, K., Amos, C., Hall, A. and Lenehan, J. (2014). Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Long Term Intervention Monitoring Project. Lachlan river system. Commonwealth Environmental Water Office, University of Canberra, NSW Environment and Heritage and NSW Department of Primary Industries. Gawne, B., Brooks, S., Butcher, R., Cottingham, P., Everingham, P., Hale, J., Nielson, D., Stewardson, M. and Stoffels, R. (2013) Long Term Intervention Monitoring Logic and Rationale Document Final Report prepared for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office by The Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre, MDFRC Publication 01/2013, May, 109pp. Godínez-Alvarez, H., Herrick, J. E., Mattocks, M., Toledo, D., & Van Zee, J. (2009). Comparison of three vegetation monitoring methods: their relative utility for ecological assessment and monitoring. Ecological indicators 9(5), 10011008. Grimes RF (1987). Crown assessment of natural spotted gum (Eucalyptus maculata) and ironbark (Eucalyptus fibrosa, Eucalyptus depranophylla) forest’, Queensland Department of Forestry, Technical Paper No. 7. Roberts, J. (2007). Condition of Murrumbidgil Swamp. A report to the NSW RiverBank Program. Report JR 19/2007. Canberra, ACT. April 2007. Systat (1997). Systat 7.01 for Windows. SPSS Institute, USA.
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 137
Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands 1
2
Patrick Driver , Peter Lloyd-Jones and Emily Barbour 1.
3
NSW Office of Water, Orange, NSW, Australia and Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW
2.
NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Sydney, NSW, Australia
3.
Oxford University, United Kingdom
Key Points • Environmental flow delivery decision-making requires readily available information. In terms of wetland plants, the reporting focus is usually on groundcover and the health of floodplain trees. • Rapid groundcover assessments of plant diversity are required. A rapid survey method was compared to a more time-consuming quadrat method, and revealed greater species richness. • River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) health was also assessed using historical photographs and wellestablished visual measures, and were found to also indicate health of a nearby reed bed.
Abstract Water Sharing Plans require ecosystem function and diversity to be preserved through river operating rules and their implementation. To aid effective implementation wetland monitoring methods should be rapid, and allow representation of function and diversity over relevant times and space. We consider this for monitoring methods used for environmental flow assessment in Murray Darling wetlands (southeast Australia). Each wetland is unique in terms of species composition, chemistry, geomorphology and flow regime; and all of these measures have unique responses in time and space. This study assesses rapid assessment approaches for groundcover based on previous data and, for river red gums, photos, to inform wetland health for real-time water management. The rapid assessment method records higher plant species richness compared to a more time-consuming transect method; especially in sites with greater species richness. Tree health measures are likely to help assess not just tree health, but the availability of shallow groundwater for deeprooted plant species. Both the tree and rapid groundcover methods produce useful information much more rapidly than other methods commonly employed in the Murray Darling Basin.
Keywords Wetlands, plants, Murray Darling Basin, Monitoring, trees, groundwater
Introduction Wetland methods that are useful within natural resource management are often required to be rapid, and allow representation of function and diversity over relevant times and space (Driver et al. 2013; Gawne et al. 2013). This is the case of monitoring methods used for environmental flow assessment in Murray Darling Basin, Australia. The need for such methods continues in southeast Australia as new monitoring programs partly such as the Commonwealth governments Long Term Intervention Monitoring (LTIM) Program incorporates methods and data from previous programs (Gawne et al. 2013). In this study we consider the efficacy of groundcover plant survey methods for assessing species richness, with the intent of exploring its use within the developing Lachlan LTIM program (Dyer et al. 2014). We compare a rapid, larger area survey method and a more detailed transect method employed within the Lachlan River, New South Wales. Transect work is often more standard in vegetation fieldwork, but it could be less efficient for answering some questions that are required within days or weeks after survey. This work was done as part of the then NSW Governments Integrated Monitoring of Environmental Flow Program (IMEF). This study just focuses on work done under IMEF on the Lachlan River (Driver et al. 2010, 2011, 2013; Chessman et al. 2003). The detail and effort previously employed in this work can no longer be resourced and so methods to simply field methods with resulting, comparable detail are sought in this paper through analysis.
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 133
7ASM Full Paper Driver et. al. – Rapid wetland groundcover appraisal Methods Survey methods developed for IMEF plant survey (Driver et al 2003) included two approaches: 1. A rapid on-ground survey lasting for an hour in an area 100 m long by the width of the wetland (~ 20-30 m); and 2. Assessment of three fixed location transects across the study area, comprising 10 quadrats of size 1 m by 1 m were randomly allocated to the length of each transect (equating to 30 quadrats). Each transect went from bank to bank and was randomly allocated along the length of the wetland at IMEF study inception in 1999 (for more detail on sites, selection and field methods see Chessman et al. 2003). Plants were recorded to species, and where this was uncertain specimens were lodged and verified with the Sydney Herbarium. The transect methods typically took about twice as long as the rapid method. This groundcover survey approach was employed in wetlands near Booligal, southwest New South Wales at three sites; 2 billabongs (Merrimajeel and Erin’s) and one swamp (Booligal Swamp). Tree health was assessed using the canopy condition method by Drew et al (2002), which are very similar earlier methods developed by Grimes (1987). Scores were: 1. Healthy tree; 2. Foliage beginning to die from the tips of the branches, with some thinning or sickness of the leaves and some partly dead branches; 3. As with 2 but with greater loss of foliage and some completely dead branches and 4. Most of the epicormic foliage has died and 5. dead tree. The field method included fixed location photographs, which were used to determine tree health scores. Results from this method were focused on two wetlands within the Great Cumbung Swamp (GCS; Lake Marrool and Lignum Lake), and the results were compared to measures of Phragmites australis biomass in the core reed bed of the GCS. Biomass was a function of area coverage and height observed in the field, is significantly associated with groundwater inflows (described in Driver et al. 2011). Analyses of groundcover and tree data employed regression and Analysis of Variance using Systat (1997). Categorical variables site and year were tested in the first analyses to assess if they were significant effects. Residuals of these analyses were assessed, and transformations applied where required which improved homogeneity of variance.
Results Groundcover There were more species collected under the rapid assessment method than with the transect method, with this trend explaining more than 50% of the patterns observed (Figure 1). Time and site were insignificant effects in the model for transect count when the rapid score was a correlate in the model (N = 8, df = 1, P = 0.025). The transect method on average only recorded 61% of the species that the rapid assessment method recorded. There was also a general trend that as richness went up, the transect method recorded proportionally less of the total richness, with the trend suggesting that only about 50% of species would be recorded in a wetland that had 47 species recorded using the rapid approach (Figure 2). This trend explains a bit more than 70% of the patterns observed after removal of the outlier value of 38% for Erin’s on March 2002 (N = 7, df = 1, P = 0.013).
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 134
7ASM Full Paper Driver et. al. – Rapid wetland groundcover appraisal Table 1. Results of transect versus rapid survey Location
Date of sample
Merrimajeel Merrimajeel Merrimajeel Erin’s Erin’s Booligal Booligal Booligal
6/05/2003 5/03/2002 7/03/2001 8/05/2003 5/03/2002 7/05/2003 4/03/2002 8/03/2001
year
# transect species
# rapid species
%
2003 2002 2001 2003 2002 2003 2002 2001
22 17 15 15 6 17 14 11
38 22 20 28 16 29 32 13
58 77 75 54 38 59 44 85
Species richness with rapid versus transect method 25
Transect method
20 15 10
y = 0.5757x R² = 0.5156
5 0 10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Rapid method
Figure 1. Species richness resulting from transect survey versus rapid survey method
Species richness with rapid versus transect method (as a % )
Transect method as a %
100 90 80 70 60 50 y = -1.4948x + 103.25
40
R2 = 0.7082
30 20 10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Rapid method
Figure 2. % species richness from the transect survey as a percentage of species richness resulting from the rapid survey method
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 135
7ASM Full Paper Driver et. al. – Rapid wetland groundcover appraisal Tree health 126 rows of data were entered, but only 59 observations over three years, and the two lakes were in analyses because of missing values associated with slightly different angles of photograph. These showed a strong regression relationship between the square root of tree health and the square root of reed biomass. The lake or site (within lake) effect son this relationship were not significant, and the time effect was not a significant effect on river red gum health when reed bed biomass was an explanatory variable in the model (N = 59, df = 1, P < 0.001).
5
5
4
4
3
3
RRG _S C
RRG _S C
Figure 3. River Red Gum health scores in the two lakes (left: Lignum Lake, right: Lake Marrol) versus the square-root of Phragmites australis biomass in the Reed Bed.
2 1 0 1
2 1
2
3
4 5 6 7 SQRTREED
8
9 10
0 1
2
3
4 5 6 7 SQRTREED
8
9 10
Discussion and conclusions The methods employed in this study are refinements of existing methods, with the view to reduce field time without losing quality with the type of information that can be used by water committees for decision-making. This study is also aimed to help or complement other studies on river red gum (and other tree species) health in this valley (e.g., Roberts 2007, Barbour et al. 2011, Dyer et al. 2014), and which could benefit from complementary, longer-term data. The significant correlation between red gum health and reed bed biomass is not at all surprising because there is a wellestablished relationship between the shallow aquifer in the GCS and the health of deeper-rooted plant species (Driver et al. 2011). The tightness of the relationship between tree health at the lakes and reed biomass was more than expected, however. This will help assess broader system health when not all locations can be surveyed; in particular, the lakes are relatively easy to access during minor flooding, whereas the reed bed is not. The results from the ground cover analysis are also not surprising because there have been other studies which compare broader area based survey (ocular approaches) to transect analyses. Ocular methods have been found by others to record more species for the same effort, and are also more likely to detect rare species (Godínez-Alvarez et al. 2009). Because other studies use slightly different ocular and transect methods, it is important to locally verify such patterns for specific methods. Other area based methods could be assessed in relation to this IMEF data, and this could aid long-term, as well as short term environmental flow assessment. For example, a 20 x 20 m vegetation assessment method is employed by NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (Bowen 2013). To enable such field approaches to co-exist, this method would also
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 136
7ASM Full Paper Driver et. al. – Rapid wetland groundcover appraisal need calibrating against the transect-based method. Through such an approach different sources of data can be integrated and cross-calibrated for species richness, which then allows development of a longer-term database. Longterm data is essential for the adaptive management cycle that informs short term reporting on environmental flow effectiveness, and also the development and evaluation of Water Sharing Plans (Driver et al. 2013).
Acknowledgments This work was supported by the NSW Office of Water and its predecessors. We thank numerous field workers who have helped collect this data including Chris Higgins, Alastair Mackenzie-McHarg, Michael Longhurst and Suzanne Unthank. Recent enthusiasm to look at this data can be attributed to Sharon Bowen and Fiona Dyer. This work was supported by the University of New South Wales, the Australian National University, the National Centre for Groundwater Research and the NSW Government. Dr. Lance Lloyd provided suggestions which improved the quality of this document. The views expressed in this document are those of the authors and not necessarily that of the NSW Government.
References Barbour, E.J., Driver, P.D., Kuczera, G.A., Blakers, R.S. and Croke, B.F.W. (2011). Optimizing environmental flow rules – a conceptual model. In Chan, F., Marinova, D. and Anderssen, R.S. (eds.) MODSIM2011, 19th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation. Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand, December 2011, pp. 3994-4000. Bowen, S. (2013). NSW OEH Environmental Flow Monitoring Program: Methods for monitoring of flood-dependent vegetation communities. Waters and Rivers Team, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. Chessman, B & 17 other authors (2003). Integrated Monitoring of Environmental Flows State Summary Report 19982000. , NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources. Driver P., Raine A., Foster N. and Williams, S. (2013). Ecological monitoring to support water sharing plan evaluation, and protect wetlands of inland New South Wales, Australia. Ecological Management and Restoration 14, 187-193 Driver, PD, Chowdhury, S, Hameed, T, O'Rourke, M & Shaikh, M (2010). Ecosystem response models for lower Calare (Lachlan River) floodplain wetlands: managing wetland biota and climate change modelling.', in Overton, I & Saintilan, N (eds), Ecosystem response modelling in the Murray-Darling Basin, CSIRO Publishing, Canberra, pp. 18396 Driver, PD, Hardwick, L, Maguire, J & Lloyd-Jones, P (2003). Vegetation Survey for Billabongs. , New South Wales Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources. Driver, PD., Barbour, E. & Michener, K. (2011). An integrated surface water, groundwater and wetland plant model of th drought response and recovery for environmental water management. MODSIM2011, 19 International Congress on Modelling and Simulation Drew, A., Freudenberger, D. and Clayton, M. (2002). Weddin Catchment Biodiversity Assessment. A report for the TARGET project. October 2002. CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Canberra. Dyer, F., Broadhurst, B., Thompson, R., Jenkins, K., Driver, P., Saintilan, N., Bowen, S., Packard, P., Gilligan, D., Brandis, K., Amos, C., Hall, A. and Lenehan, J. (2014). Commonwealth Environmental Water Office Long Term Intervention Monitoring Project. Lachlan river system. Commonwealth Environmental Water Office, University of Canberra, NSW Environment and Heritage and NSW Department of Primary Industries. Gawne, B., Brooks, S., Butcher, R., Cottingham, P., Everingham, P., Hale, J., Nielson, D., Stewardson, M. and Stoffels, R. (2013) Long Term Intervention Monitoring Logic and Rationale Document Final Report prepared for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office by The Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre, MDFRC Publication 01/2013, May, 109pp. Godínez-Alvarez, H., Herrick, J. E., Mattocks, M., Toledo, D., & Van Zee, J. (2009). Comparison of three vegetation monitoring methods: their relative utility for ecological assessment and monitoring. Ecological indicators 9(5), 10011008. Grimes RF (1987). Crown assessment of natural spotted gum (Eucalyptus maculata) and ironbark (Eucalyptus fibrosa, Eucalyptus depranophylla) forest’, Queensland Department of Forestry, Technical Paper No. 7. Roberts, J. (2007). Condition of Murrumbidgil Swamp. A report to the NSW RiverBank Program. Report JR 19/2007. Canberra, ACT. April 2007. Systat (1997). Systat 7.01 for Windows. SPSS Institute, USA.
Driver, P., Lloyd-Jones, P. & Barbour, E. (2014). Rapid appraisal of groundcover plant diversity and red gum health for the management of Murray Darling Basin wetlands, in Vietz, G; Rutherfurd, I.D, and Hughes, R. (editors), Proceedings of the 7th Australian Stream Management Conference. Townsville, Queensland, Pages 133-137. 137
