Assessing social acceptability of management options for harmonising irrigation with environmental concerns: A pilot study from the murrumbidgee Valley, Australia

Abstract

The flows in regulated rivers are strongly dependent on water demand by downstream water users. In irrigated catchments the river flow regimes are deliberately distorted to cater for crop demand, with significant deleterious ecological impacts. A number of opportunities exist to manipulate irrigation demand and supply to provide more natural seasonality of flows and optimise the social, environmental and economic outcomes from water use in a catchment. Possible options to achieve this goal include improved cropping mix incentives, groundwater - surface water substitution, intra and inter-seasonal water trading and harmonisation of on- and off-farm storage, distribution, application and drain..