Supporting Document 7 from the NCCARF project ‘Adapting to climate change: a risk assessment and decision making framework for managing groundwater dependent ecosystems with declining water levels'.

Executive summary

This document reports on the provision of Geographic Information System (GIS) services to the NCCARF project – “Adapting to Climate Change: A Risk Assessment and Decision Making Framework for Managing Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems with Declining Water Levels”. There were two specific objectives:
•Incorporation of hydrological data on to GIS platform
•Incorporation of risk assessment framework on to GIS platform

Ultimately the work covered 6 main areas:
•Identifying and sourcing data from custodians in WA.
•Creation of new datasets from data provided.
•Incorporation of hydrological data on to GIS platform, and producing maps of exposure and vulnerability of GDEs in the study area.
•Integrating GIS data with Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) Models.
•Investigating ways of integrating environmental values with risk

Sourcing Datasets

This study focussed on three sites representing two groundwater dependent aquatic ecosystems (GDEs): Wetlands on the data-rich Gnangara Mound (Gnangara Study Area) and in the data-poor Blackwood catchment (Blackwood Study Area) and adjacent caves (Jewel and Lake Caves, Margaret River).

Main providers of datasets were:
•The CSIRO
•Western Australian Department of Water (DOW); and
•Western Australian Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC)

The CSIRO-led South West Sustainable Yields Project (SWSY) provided a set of groundwater change projections for different climate scenarios out to the year 2030 (CSIRO, 2009A). 

•Scenario A – This historical climate scenario was based on the climate of the historical past (28 years 1975 to 2007). 
•Scenario B – The recent climate scenario based on the climate of the recent past (10 years 1997 to 2007).
•C Scenarios - Future climate. These were based on 15 global climate models with three estimates of temperature changes to give three alternative ~2030 climates:
oScenario CDry – Dry extreme
oScenario CMid - Median
oScenario CWet – Wet extreme
•Scenario D - The future climate with future development scenario used the same climate time series as CMid, but added future levels of development by increasing groundwater abstraction to full allocation limits.

The projections had been made using PRAMS (the Perth Regional Aquifer Modelling System) and SWAMS (the South West Regional Aquifer Modelling System). All of the datasets received were organised within a GIS framework. Significant amounts of data were received in non-spatial form and were converted to spatial datasets. 

Please cite this report as:
Neville, S 2013, Adapting to climate change: A risk assessment and decision making framework for managing groundwater dependent ecosystems with declining water levels. Supporting Document 7: Spatially representing the impacts of falling groundwater due to climate change on groundwater dependent ecosystems, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast, 113 pp. 

View the main report from this suite
Visit the research project page 

Cover image: Low density peri-urban housing adjacent to Lake Powell, a freshwater wetland in Western Australia © Simon Neville, Ecotones and Associates.