Objectives
The NSW Water Management Act 2000, associated Water Sharing Plans, and the Basin Plan 2012, require NSW Department Industry, Water to identify groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) and prioritise the most ecologically valuable within each plan area for protection. The High Ecological Value Aquatic Ecosystems (HEVAE) framework has already been adopted to prioritise riverine ecosystems for management in surface water sharing plans. Here, we provide a method developed using the HEVAE framework to prioritise terrestrial vegetation GDEs for management.
Design and Methodology
The GDE HEVAE method is developed as a spatial model, that uses recorded and predicted distribution data, and mapped vegetation data to provide weighted scores for each attribute associated with the four HEVAE criteria (distinctiveness, diversity, vital habitat and naturalness) and are combined into an overall score. The combined scores categorise the ecological value of each groundwater dependent vegetation community (depicted as GIS polygon features) from very high to very low.
Original data and results
This method determined outcomes to assist NSW water management activities for water sharing plans and water resource plans under the Basin Plan. The outcomes can be represented as maps to provide a visual representation of locations of vegetation communities of ecological value, and as an attributed dataset to allow the user to look at each individual attribute and the associated criteria to determine the key drivers contributing to the scores.
Conclusion
The methods developed have provided a systematic, repeatable and transparent approach to integrated related information. This to helps prioritise areas of importance for water management needs such as; scheduling of GDEs into water sharing plans, using consequence scores within risk assessments, allowing individuals to locate GDEs of varying ecological value to inform other assessments, and prioritisation of areas to undertake monitoring and evaluation. When coupled with the NSW Riverine HEVAE methods, ecological value of assigned groundwater and riverine GDEs are consistently assigned.