Northern Australia Irrigation Futures

Providing new knowledge, tools, and processes to support debate
and decision making regarding irrigation in northern Australia

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Project Goal

Providing new knowledge, tools and processes to support debate and decision making regarding irrigation in northern Australia

Project Objectives

1. To delineate key landscape attributes (including soil & water resources, climate, vegetation, rivers, near shore marine environments, & where appropriate links to people, industries, markets) relevant to ecologically sustainable irrigation across northern Australia
2. To use key landscape attributes to develop sustainability indicators and associated management criteria covering a range of scales (field, farm, district, irrigation scheme, catchment) for northern Australia
3. To develop an overall framework that, through their involvement, is embraced by policy makers, regulators, investors and managers, to help ensure any irrigation is managed in a consistent, ecologically sustainable manner in northern Australia
4. To use a number of linked case studies and stakeholder input to support and inform development and testing of the framework
5. Through provision of a robust framework, contribute tools and knowledge to support considered debate, decision making and long term strategic planning for northern Australia & Australia as a whole.

Project Outline

The NAIF project has been established to help address the likely future role of irrigation in northern Australia. Key questions being asked are: Should we irrigate in northern Australia? If so, where should we irrigate, what should irrigation look like, and how should it be managed?

To help address these questions the project is focussing efforts in three key areas:

1. Sustainability Framework
This work focuses on developing a sustainability framework consisting of a suite of tools and processes to help support robust debate and transparent decision making regarding irrigation. The three main tools will include:
(i) Visioning tool – key elements of the sustainability framework that help support debate about if and where to site irrigation within a catchment and provides broad criteria for design and management
(ii) Planning and Assessment tool - key elements of the sustainability framework that help determine and quantify risks of irrigation
(iii) Monitoring and Reporting tool - key elements of the sustainability framework that help with monitoring, reporting and finetuning of irrigation performance within a catchment context.

2. Tropical Groundwater Systems
This work focuses on developing improved understanding of water in the tropics, particularly tropical groundwater systems and likely risks to groundwater and connected surface water systems if used for irrigation.

3. Irrigation Mosaics
This work focuses on developing a conceptual understanding of the differences between traditional large scale irrigation systems and mosaics involving irrigation of smaller discrete patches of land dispersed across tropical landscapes. Particular attention will be given to understanding the spatial distribution of patches within the landscape and potential impacts of patch size and connectivity.

The NAIF project is well linked with the Tropical Rivers Program, NRM Regional bodies, local governments and communities across northern Australia, and the Commonwealth, WA, NT, and QLD governments who have responsibilities for tropical Australia. It seeks to add value to government and community processes addressing natural resource management in order to ensure irrigation, if developed, is done so sustainably within a catchment context.