A collaboration between Melbourne Water, The University of Melbourne and La Trobe University has won the 2020 Ecological Impact Award from the Ecological Society of Australia.
The collaboration was honoured for its work on an ecological modelling method for protecting aquatic wildlife.
Researcher at Melbourne Water, Rhys Coleman said the modelling provided important predictions of how waterways were likely to be impacted by continued urban growth and climate change.
“The modelling draws on Melbourne Water’s extensive long-term datasets on the distribution of fish, platypus and aquatic invertebrates and information on the characteristics of sites, such as streamside vegetation and stream flows and where these animals are present or absent,” Dr Coleman said.
“We can then make predictions of where particular animals are likely to exist in areas yet to be surveyed – or how they might benefit from certain management actions,” he said.
“This modelling is helping scientists, waterway managers and the community identify priority actions that give us the best chance of protecting our waterways for future generations.”
Dr Coleman said the model’s unique methodology was drawn from more than 20 years of past biological monitoring data and could predict the future conditions of thousands of kilometres of waterways and associated habitats across Greater Melbourne.
He said the integration of expertise between Melbourne Water, The University of Melbourne’s Waterway Ecosystem Research Group and the Centre for Freshwater Ecosystems at La Trobe University was critical to the success of the modelling method.
