Perth Laboratory – Public Seminar Series 2008

Impacts of climate change on land and water resources – An integrated hydrological modelling approach

Dr Syed Mahtab Ali
Research Scientist
CSIRO Land and Water
Water for a Healthy Country Flagship

Thursday 27th March 2008 at 3.30pm, CSIRO Auditorium

PowerPoint Presentation
(1.3 MB)
Web-streamed audio presentation

Abstract

The Southwest Irrigation Area (SIA) consists of three irrigation districts (Waroona, Harvey and Collie) located about 90 km south of Perth. These three districts supply about 40% of Perth’s dairy needs. Flood irrigation is used to boost the pasture production and over irrigation is common in the area. Due to this excessive irrigation practice during summer most of the irrigated area becomes waterlogged during an average winter rainfall season. The actual weather conditions usually determine the level of waterlogging and flooding in the area. Dry weather (below average rainfall) causes less waterlogging and relatively wet weather (above average rainfall) results in excessive waterlogging problems. The waterlogging takes a relatively long time to disappear in the following spring resulting in accessibility problems, lost opportunity for cropping and low productivity.

A Water for a Healthy Country Flagship project was carried out to assess the impacts of climate change or weather conditions on the waterlogging and flooding in the SIA using a fully integrated and spatially distributed integrated hydrological model called MIKE SHE. A simple approach was used to define a wet, average and dry climate using past meteorological data. The model was calibrated and validated for a subcatchment of around 8000 ha in the study area by using the physical and historical hydrological data. The validated model was used to run a number of wet, average and dry climate scenarios with three levels of irrigation. The aim was to assess the impacts of various weather conditions along with different levels of irrigation on the groundwater levels. The model (MIKE SHE) produced a wide range of results for various scenarios. These results are presented in this seminar.

About the speaker

Dr Syed Mahtab Ali is a Research Scientist in the Groundwater Hydrology research group of the Hydrology research program, and in the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship project "Perth Water Systems". He has applied advanced integrated hydrological modelling in assessing the impact of climate change and engineering interventions on land and water resources.

Current Research:

• Surface and groundwater interaction with and without engineering interventions
• Impact of climate change on groundwater with and without drainage
• Modelling vegetation response by using integrated modelling to estimate its impact on stream flows and groundwater
• Impact of land use changes on the water balance at catchment scale

PowerPoint Presentation
(1.3 MB)

Web-streamed audio presentation

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