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Forest Landscape Restoration in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin

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A Goal-Oriented Approach to Forest Landscape Restoration

Part of the book series: World Forests ((WFSE,volume 16))

Abstract

The Murray-Darling Basin covers one million square kilometers of south eastern Australia and includes a large proportion of the nation’s most productive farmlands. The catchment has been extensively deforested over the last 100 years and, since that time, much the basin’s water resources have been allocated to irrigation. Rising concerns about dryland salinity and biodiversity losses as well as potential carbon sequestration benefits have generated interest in reforestation. Although various tree-planting schemes have been carried out in the past the environmental benefits of these have been modest. This chapter describes efforts to design a large-scale reforestation program that would have environmental benefits and be attractive to landholders. The approach uses a Scenario Planning and Investment Framework tool that integrates spatial data relevant to tree growth and environmental services from across a very large area to identify appropriate locations for reforestation. The tool enables users to pose questions such as where might trees be grown at a low cost while controlling dryland salinity, sequestering carbon and having the least negative effect on streamflows. The ways in which reforestation might be promoted on a large scale and some of the impediments to doing so are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

I’m grateful to my colleagues, listed in the Polglase et al. references below, for their hard work on the Commercial Environmental Forestry (CEF) Program and development of the SPIF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences and CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship, 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

    Trevor H. Booth

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  1. Trevor H. Booth
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Correspondence to Trevor H. Booth .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Ctr. Forest Disturbance Science, US Forest Service, Green St. 320, Athens, 30602, Georgia, USA

    John Stanturf

  2. , Danish Ctr Forest, Landscape Planning, University of Copenhagen, Vedelsgade 6, Vejle, 7100, Denmark

    Palle Madsen

  3. Center for Mined Land Rehabilitation, Queensland University, Brisbane, 4072, Queensland, Australia

    David Lamb

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Booth, T.H. (2012). Forest Landscape Restoration in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin. In: Stanturf, J., Madsen, P., Lamb, D. (eds) A Goal-Oriented Approach to Forest Landscape Restoration. World Forests, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5338-9_13

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