Feature articles

A full list of publications by MWRPP researchers can be found via the following links:

Google Scholar Journal articles
Book chapters
Conference proceedings

Understanding and managing the interactive impacts of growth in urban land use and climate change on freshwater biota: A case study using the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus)

Coleman, R.A., Chee, Y.E., Bond, N.R., Weeks, A., Griffiths, J., Serena, M., Williams, G.A. & Walsh, C.J. (2022). Global change biology, 28(4), 1287-1300

This paper reports on development of high-resolution environmental spatial data for stream networks and spatially explicit habitat suitability models (HSMs) to explore the impact of threats and to identify the combination of management actions most likely to maintain or improve habitat suitability for Platypus over the next 50 years in greater Melbourne, Australia.

The paper found that Platypus occurred more commonly in larger, cooler streams with greater catchment-weighted discharge, following periods of greater stream flow. They were positively associated with near-stream forest cover and negatively associated with annual air temperature and urban stormwater runoff. Extensive reductions in suitable platypus habitat are predicted to occur under urbanization and climate change scenarios, with the greatest threat expected from reduced streamflows – emphasizesing the importance of maintaining flow regimes as part of conserving platypus in the region.

Enhancing stormwater control measures using real-time control technology: a review.

Xu, W. D., Burns, M. J., Cherqui, F., & Fletcher, T. D. (2021). Urban Water Journal, 18(2), 101-114.

This paper reviews the application of Real-Time Control (RTC) applied to different types of SCMs at a range of scales, revealing both the benefits and challenges. The first part discusses how RTC could enhance the hydrologic performance of different types of SCMs. The second part investigates the potential of RTC technology to play a major role at larger scales, by operating a range of distributed small-scale systems as a coordinated system.

The paper concludes that use of RTC technology has the real potential to improve current
urban water management and overcome existing barriers. RTC can improve the performance of various type of SCMs at the site scale, in terms of both runoff quality and quantity. There is
also an untested potential to tackle the mix of scales, where RTC could gather the decentralised small-scale systems into a virtually connected network, achieving much greater control of urban runoff at catchment scale.

Longer duration flooding reduces the growth and sexual reproductive efforts of a keystone wetland tree species.

Greet, J., Fischer, S., & Russell, K. (2020). Wetlands Ecology and Management, 28:655-666

This paper surveyed 140 Eucalyptus camphora (Mountain Swamp Gum) trees across a swamp forest in both 2012 and 2019. Using TUFLOW to model daily water levels for the period from 2009 to 2019, it determined the flooding history for each surveyed tree and then assessed the effect of flooding duration and tree size on the survival, growth, condition and extent of sexual reproduction of individual trees.

The paper concludes that longer flooding durations limited the basal area growth of larger trees and reduced extent of sexual reproduction. Larger trees had greater basal area growth and signs of sexual reproduction overall. There were no clear effects of flooding duration or tree size on survival or condition. Its suggests that for flood-tolerant tree species, prolonged (but not chronic) flooding is likely to result in slower-growing smaller trees potentially without impacts on condition or survival, and that slow tree growth and vegetative regeneration are important strategies for persistence in swamps.

Catchment-scale urbanization diminishes effects of habitat complexity on instream macroinvertebrate assemblages.

White, J.Y. and Walsh, C.J. (2020). Ecological Applications, 30(8).

This paper experimentally assessed the effect of increased surface complexity in wood, the dominant hard substrate in our 18 study reaches on14 small streams, on in-stream macroinvertebrate assemblages across a range of urban impact.

The paper found that increased surface complexity increased abundance of most taxa, but this effect was less pronounced in urban streams, partly because of the reduced species pool tolerant of urban stormwater impacts, and partly because of a lesser response of some species to increased complexity in more urban streams. The result suggest that restoration of habitat complexity in streams without catchment-scaled rivers of degradation is likely to have small, positive benefits to in-stream biotic assemblages, but the efficacy of such approaches in catchments subject to urban stormwater runoff will be greatly diminished. For streams of urban catchments, restoration activities should first be aimed at controlling the larger-scale problem, which is typically the altered water quality, reduced base flows, and increased intensity and frequency of storm-flows caused by urban stormwater runoff.