Climate change and its impact on national water supplies is situated to dominate future global challenges and conflicts. Whether it is rising, being depleted, or heating up, the effects are already felt on coastlines and in semi-arid regions around the world. Australia, the driest inhabited continent, yet with some of the wettest areas on earth, is a country where drought and floods occur simultaneously, with dramatic results. This travelling seminar takes you to two unique and vastly different parts of Australia-the Murray Darling Basin and the Great Barrier Reef-to explore from multiple perspectives the ecological, political, and social challenges of water management at a time of growing crisis.
The focus throughout this seminar will be the ecological, political, and social impact of climate change on Australia’s two fragile aquatic environments. The seminar visits the Murray Darling Basin in New South Wales and Victoria: the source of water for much of Australia’s ‘fertile crescent‘; home of internationally important wetlands; but now under threat and the subject of contested government and environmental intervention. Here participants will consider environment, infrastructure, irrigation and fresh water research, within the context of managing this threatened resource. Participants will also visit the iconic Great Barrier Reef in Far North Queensland, where scientists seek to make the Reef as healthy and resilient as possible, through careful management of catchment water, to help enable this unique marine system to withstand the impact of global warming. Accompanying the seminar in both Queensland and the Murray-Darling will be local water researchers who will give on site lectures on field trips.
