Overcoming the challenges of monitoring and evaluating environmental flows through science

Overcoming the challenges of monitoring and evaluating environmental flows through science–management partnerships

Webb, J. Angus / Miller, Kimberly A. / de Little, Siobhan C. / Stewardson, Michael J.

Environmental flows programmes can be controversial, given that they transfer water from consumptive to environmental uses. It is, therefore, imperative that their performance is assessed against their anticipated ecological benefits. However, environmental flows present both technical and institutional challenges that cannot be addressed by traditional approaches to monitoring and evaluation. We present a framework that is currently being employed to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental flows in Victoria, Australia. The framework encourages a shift from expert-based models of ecological response to flow variation to those developed using the so-called ‘evidence-based’ methods that have become commonplace in medicine. The framework relies on close collaboration between scientists and managers for the design of monitoring programmes, collection and collation of data, and analysis and interpretation of results. Results will inform adaptive management of environmental flows in Victoria and improve basic understanding of the ecological impacts of changes in flow regime. Our experience suggests that the technical and institutional challenges for monitoring and evaluating environmental flows can be mostly overcome by close and continuing collaboration between managers and researchers. We are unaware of any equivalent programmes anywhere in the world and believe that our framework is transferable to any other large-scale environmental flows monitoring programme.