The Williams Crew: Current Projects

This study for the National Water Commission is refining the riparian vegetation indices developed for the National Land and Water Resources Audit (2001). A variety of existing spatial datasets will be used to index current riparian vegetation structure as part of the overall Habitat Structure Index and to summarise vegetation change as part of the Aquatic Biota Index.

This large eWater CRC project aims to assess how flow variability affects habitat development and water quality; flow-related ecological requirements of aquatic and riparian plants, invertebrates and fish species; and surface-groundwater interactions particularly in relation to riparian and floodplain vegetation.

This small project applied the metapopulation spread model to the invasive aquatic plant Sagittaria graminea (arrowhead) which is spreading into the central River Murray from upstream tributaries. It incorporated a cost of control module to help evaluate alternative strategies for spray operations.

This study developed a metapopulation model to forecast the rate of spread of aquatic and riparian species in relation to the concerns of water resource managers. These include the timing and frequency of floods and the size of founder populations.

This study described the macrophyte and littoral vegetation of three weir pools to develop understanding of factors controlling distributions and abundances. Comparisons were made with vegetation in adjacent ‘free-flowing’ sections and implications drawn for the monitoring of vegetation responses to a proposed Euston pool drawdown .

The purposes of this study were to measure plant biodiversity, to correlate species richness and structure measures with site physical characteristics and to consider the potential for developing species-based statistical models using tools such as GAMs to predict species presence.