"Melbourne’s Love Affair with Forested Water Catchments; What is its future?"
Melbourne has been proud of the quality of water from its forested catchments for over a century. These have quietly and consistently fed the city with a flow of high quality and high energy water – so much so that the average citizen has little knowledge of where the water comes from.
At the same time, conservation of the catchment vegetation has been regarded as synonymous with water supply management.
As the city grows, augmentation of this water from more land, improved catchment yields, or alternatives such as desalination is becoming necessary and even urgent.
The seminar will look, in a semi-quantitative way, at the growth in area of these catchments concomitant with the historic population growth.
New results from past experimental projects looking at the hydrology of the forests of differing ages will be examined. These shed some light on the water use of forests, both old-growth and regrowth, and the limits of supply from forested catchments.
Fire events of the last decade have raised the question of whether “old forests” can be maintained in the face of aggressively destructive fires.
The high construction and energy cost of alternative water supplies have raised the question that future generations may demand higher water yields through some form of active management.
These and other important questions will be considered by our panel of experts.
Speakers
The speakers selected have a wealth of knowledge and background on the matters being discussed. They include:
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Leon Bren, Associate Professor, Department of Forest and Ecosystem Science, University of Melbourne. |
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Patrick Lane, Senior Lecturer, Department of Forest and Ecosystem Science, University of Melbourne. |
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Kevin Tolhurst, Senior Lecturer, Department of Forest and Ecosystem Science, University of Melbourne. |
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John Langford, Professor of Water Resources, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Melbourne. |
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Chris Walsh, Associate Professor, Department of Resource Management and Geography. |
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Dr Grace Mitchell, Manager, Water Accounting Section, Water Division, Bureau of Meteorology. |
