Impacts of native forest harvesting on flows into the Murray-Darling Basin system

Abstract

Recent drought in Australia has shown the importance of inflow into the Murray-Darling Basin from forested catchments in high-rainfall areas. Concern has been expressed that native forest logging could, by leading to regrowth forests, diminish this inflow. This reflects that at least one eucalypt community has a water use in which regrowth water yield is, for a given annual rainfall, less than that from 'old-growth' forest. Available data sets showing the relation between forest age, annual rainfall and water yield from forested catchments were used to select the best of four models of age-related water yield from forests. Commercial forests across the entire Murray Darling Basin were catego..