Project Summary

Project	Establishing Baseline Ecological Conditions for the Lower Lakes, South Australia: The Applications of Palaeoecology to Sustainable Resource Management
Researchers	Dr Jennie Fluin & Dr John Tibby
Funding Source	Australian Research Council Linkage Project
Summary	The Lower Lakes of the Murray River are in a critical ecological state due to record low water levels. Management of these lakes needs to integrate water security demands with maintaining healthy ecosystem functions. Proposed management options such as allowing seawater incursion and the construction of a weir to impede freshwater flows are based on assumptions about what the Lakes were like naturally (pre-European). This study will reconstruct environmental variability within the Lower Lakes over the past 7000 years, concentrating on salinity to document the extent of marine incursion, and pH to examine the impacts of acid sulphate release from exposed sediments during low flow events.

Authorised by:	Head of Faculty, Humanities & Social Sciences
Maintained by:	Faculty Website Maintainer

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