Presentations Tuesday October 14
City Hall, downstairs Main Corner, 1 Bay Road, Mount Gambier
9.00 am REGISTRATION9.30 / Welcome and expected seminar outcomes / Rob de Fégely, IFA President
Session 1 / Global and national perspectives
9.40 / Forests and water - a global perspective / Ashley Webb, NSW DPI
10.10 / The National Water Initiative; History, Regulations, Water Markets and the MDBA / Phil Townswend, MDBA
10.40 MORNING TEA
Session 2 / Regional settings
11.00 / Regional hydro-geology,Obswells, DTW, drains and pasture recharge rates / Jeff Lawson, DEWNR
11.30 / Tree and plantation water use studies in the Green Triangle region / Richard Benyon, UniMelb
12.00 / Deemed models of plantation water use in the LLC WAP / Darryl Harvey, DEWNR
12.30 / Lower Limestone Coast Water Allocation Plan
2013: Forestry water licences, water markets, regulatory compliance & penalties / Tim Bond, DEWNR
1.00 LUNCH
Session 3 / Other stakeholders perspectives on plantation water use
2.00 / Regional Wetlands, and their interactions with plantations / Mark Bachmann, Nature Glenelg Trust
2.20 / Irrigator’s perspectives on the water allocation plan and the inclusion of farm and commercial forestry.
The challenges of change 1990 to 2014 / Dairy - Graeme Hamilton
Potatoes - Terry Buckley
Kent Martin
3.20 AFTERNOON TEA
Session 4 / Water use economics & recent R&D
3.40 / Plantation water use studies in surface water catchments / Ashley Webb, NSW DPI
4.10 / Quantifying regional water use - a satellite view 2000 to 2011 / Tim McVicar, CSIRO
4.40 / Fire and water / Don McGuire
5.10 / Future research needs / Don McGuire
5.20 / Summing up and close / Jim O’Hehir, ForestrySA
6.30 / Drinks and dinner at Sorrento’s
Field tour, Wednesday 15 October 2014
Departing from behind Main Corner,1 Bay Road, Mount Gambier
8.00 am SHARP
0800
8.15 / BlueLakePumping Station / JeffLawson,DEWNR
9.15 / Telfords Quarry (Bus viewpoint)
9.40 / Burrungle,HighSQPSP (550m3 at age 11) / JanRombouts, ForestrySA
10.15 / MORNING TEA - GlencoeNursery
10.45 / Wetland monitoring at DiagonalRoadSwamp / ClaireHarding, DEWNR
11.15 / EP117Phosphorus response on wet sites / Don McGuire
12.00 / LUNCH atLake Edward
12.50 / MarshesSwamp (Bus viewpoint)
1.20 / MangaLane,Pine/Bluegum Comparison / Mike Powell, ForestrySA
1.50 / Robe Penola Rd, BakersRangeDrain (Bus viewpoint)
2.05 / Robe Penola Rd,Giles Hole 49 / Don McGuire
3.10 / NAN009
Penola3Ryieldplots / Don McGuire
JimO’Hehir, ForestrySA
4.00 / Mount Gambier Airport in timeforafternoondepartures
Melbourne 16.30, Adelaide 17.10 18.45
4.10 / AirportPlantations-spacingtrial,“Piney”plot,Lysimeters, 1979/82 Cooperative Eucalypt trials / Don McGuire
5.00 / Return to Mount Gambier library carpark
Program accurate at 8 October 2014
Robis IFA President and Director of VicForests. He has over 28 years of experience in the Australian forest industry and he has a strong interest in natural resource management particularly the integration of forestry and agriculture.
His consulting experience Australia as well as Asia and North America extends from forest resource assessment to processing and end product market reviews.
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Dr Jim O’Hehir
General Manager – Ranges & Research, ForestrySA
Dr Jim O’Hehir is the General Manager, Ranges and Research for ForestrySA.
Dr O’Hehir is based in Mt Gambier and is responsible for executive management of ForestrySA’s estate in the Mount Lofty Ranges and the plantation research program.
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Kent Martin
Kent Martin and Family operate a 1000 acre farm at Kalangadoo, SA, producing both terminal sires and prime lambs from a 2000 head flock, together with beef cattle and irrigated crops. Kent has been actively involved in agricultural politics at a high level for some thirty years, serving terms on the SA Soil Council, Land Care Council and NRM Council, chairing the SAFF Horticultural Section and the SAFF Natural Resources Committee and serving three years on the SAFF Board.
He was instrumental in developing the SAFF Sustainable Management and Water Harvesting policies. He has been involved with both surface and ground water projects within the region including the Upper South East Drainage Scheme and the Lower Limestone Coast WAP.
He represented SAFF in the initial stakeholder meetings in 2003. He specialised in developing strong working relationships with governments, government agencies, land owners and the forestry industry. Equity for all participants was the benchmark. / Requirements for successful stakeholder engagement in the development of regulation for land use change under the National Water Initiative.
The Challenges of Change 1990-2014
The sustainable management of Lower South East ground water required development of not only good policy backed by robust science but communication strategies that would gain required support from government, land owners, industry and the community to implement a water allocation plan containing an effective water resource budgeting system structured around water property rights.
The talk will focus on key issues involved in getting the plantation forest industry along with other landowner groups to participate in the development of a responsible working Water Allocation Plan, the implications of the precedents set with the introduction of water property rights for plantation forestry and some suggestions on maximising and sharing our resources for the next round of negotiations. Likely agenda will include a range of issues such as full cost recovery for management of water, drought proofing of ground water dependent eco-systems and Indigenous access to and ownership of water.
Darryl Harvey, Department for Environment, Water and Natural Resources
Prior to joining the public service in 1996, Darryl was self-employed, providing an irrigation design, supply and installation service to an extensive area of South Australia, Victoria and south-west New South Wales.
During this period there was concurrent ownership and management of mixed farming and grazing properties in the Padthaway-Western Flat area of the South East. Farm enterprises included livestock, irrigation and farm forestry (with several sites participating in species and management trials).
Darryl has Bachelor of Economics (University of Adelaide) and has held a range of positions in State government agencies. These have generally been as an interface role between technical and policy functions. He is currently the Team Leader for the Assessment and Advice Team in the Science, Monitoring and Knowledge Branch of his department. / Development of deemed annualised forest water accounting in the Lower Limestone Coast
Plantation forests are an extensive land use in the Lower Limestone Coast region with approximately 145000ha of plantations covering about 15 per cent of the landscape that can be considered available for industrial scale plantation forest. This plantation forest area is about 85 per cent of the State’s industrial scale plantation forest estate.
The recently adopted Water Allocation Plan for the Lower Limestone Coast now requires existing and proposed plantation forests to be accountable for impacts on the regional groundwater resource with licensed forest water allocations. The existing estate is to be granted licensed water allocations to reflect the deemed impact on the groundwater resource. Licensed water allocations are a transferable property right and generally convertible with other licensed uses. Plantation forests account for about 30 per cent of the groundwater allocation in the region.
The region has an extensive unconfined aquifer which generally occurs at relatively shallow depths and is dependent on local rainfall for recharge. This aquifer is an important natural resource for both environmental and economic purposes.Evapotranspiration of plantation forests is greater than agriculture land use at the same location, therefore a land use change from agriculture to plantation forests can impact directly on the availability of naturally occurring water resources. Plantation forests in this region reduce groundwater recharge and where the water table is shallow, plantation forests can directly extract groundwater.
It is impractical to commercially measure actual water consumption by plantation forests at a management area scale, whether in terms of impacts on surface water yield, groundwater recharge, or by direct extraction from shallow water tables, thus making it necessary to develop and adopt a robust forest water accounting system in which stakeholders can have confidence.
The adopted accounting values are not point scale impact values, but a characterisation of water resource impacts by plantation forests, compared to the alternative agricultural landscape in the same management area. The models are based on biophysical principles and provide an annualised accounting expression of plantation forest impacts on the local groundwater resource; they ‘smooth’ the aggregated hydrologic impacts of the forest over the full forest rotation period.
Visit the IFA website or contact our administrative office for more information or for registration: events@forestry .org.au ~ 02 9431 8677 ~