Well hello everybody, great to see so many people for today's webinar. This hydroterra webinar is all about landscape rehydration, why it matters for agricultural production and ecosystems and where is it best applied. So Luke Peel, who's research manager for the Maloon Institute, will be presenting on the activities of the Maloon Institute and the findings, but also more broadly on that landscape rehydration question. Given the complexity around landscapes and I guess the overlap with some of the work that Phil Mulvey, who's the CEO of Carbon Count, we've done something a bit different this time round and we're going to have a bit of a Q&A panel at the end as Phil brings some expertise relating more to the soils aspects of the catchments as well. So it should be a really good Q&A side of things. Myself, I've got a lot of experience with catchment hydrology and we'll also be answering some of those questions too. So without further ado, we better charge into it. So there's a picture of our three participants for the day and Luke, many thinks he's going to be carrying most of the effort today. A little bit about our speaker. So Luke has over 30 years in monitoring related to agriculture, landscape regeneration and natural resource management in many regions of Australia. He has implemented monitoring and mapping programs using ground-based methods in combination with satellite and aerial data, scientific analysis and reporting, communication and education and training for landholders and scientists. That's a very long sentence. Luke has previously worked in various roles in the Northern Territory Government Environment Agency, specializing in soil erosion and hydrological monitoring, spatial data analysis for vegetation mapping and developing and implementing new technologies in ground monitoring methodologies. Luke moved to Canberra to work with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority on the Sustainable Rivers Audit for River Geomorphology and Vegetation Mapping and Monitoring. He went on to lead a team at Geoscience Australia to acquire elevation data, primarily LiDAR and imagery over areas of significance. His current role called upon all that experience to plan and implement an extensive monitoring program for the Maloon Catchment Scale project called the Maloon Rehydration Initiative. HydroTerritory has worked with Luke on that project for, it must be three years now, maybe more, and it's been certainly a fantastic project to be involved in. Before we hand over to Luke, just a couple of administrative matters. We love your questions and in order for you to be able to get a question, you need to use the Q&A button and type your questions in there and at the end of the presentation we will read out those questions and the panel of Phil and Luke and myself will endeavour to answer those. So keep those questions flowing. We already have quite a few early bird questions so many things to those who sent those in. What does HydroTerritory do these webinars? We like to share knowledge, we like to facilitate education and we like to work with industry leaders and the Maloon Institute is certainly an industry leader, really promoting the benefits of catchment rehydration, but more importantly actually facilitating the on-ground works to make it happen, which is probably what Australia needs right now is more action on the ground. Okay so here's our program for the day. So part two Maloon Rehydration Initiative, monitoring results. So Luke's going to present on hydrology, flora and fauna and why these results matter. He's also going to present interestingly on a project that we've been involved in which is about looking at how do we work out where this approach should be undertaken broadly. So we were fortunate to get some funding from the New South Wales government to develop up this New South Wales catchment selection tool, which is a project that HydroTerritory has worked on with Luke and the Maloon Institute over the last, goodness must be at least 12 months, and that's been fascinating to look at what needs to be evaluated to really work out your maximum return on investment for putting in these sorts of leaky weir structures that Luke will be talking about. So Luke will be looking at that, the development of that tool as well as how catchment rehydration can be implemented in many other Australian regions, and then looking at the implications and opportunities for agriculture and the environment, and perhaps some of the consequences if we don't start doing some of these works soon. Finally we will move to the Q&A. So without further ado, welcome to Luke, and thank you to Phil for participating later on in this webinar. So over to you Luke. Thank you Richard, and thanks for the introduction, and thanks Phil for joining us today, always good working with you, and thanks to all of those that have joined us today. Firstly I want to acknowledge and pay my respects to the Ngunnawal people on whose land I'm currently on, and the Maloon catchment is primarily Ewan country but also boundary and message stick country bordering with the Ngunnawal, the Gundungra, and the Garagau people where they often met. With a first photo there you see is keep that in mind that's Maloon Creek circa 1977 and just prior to Willow revetments which were then implemented throughout this catchment and many other catchments around Australia. The Willows program did help stabilise banks from further eroding but the energy during high water flows caused these waterways to erode the bed and deepen and ensise. This dropped the water table to a new low and increased the rate at which groundwater and surface water would flow out of the system. Thus dehydrating the surrounding landscape, reducing productivity and environmental aspects of water quantity and quality that caused ecosystems to decline and deteriorate. The well intentioned Willow program addressed a symptom but not the cause and what was required is to reduce the energy of high water flow events and even slow down runoff from surrounding lands to reduce flood intensity and impact. Next slide, thanks. And for those not familiar with the work of the Maloon Institute does the left photo is another section of Maloon Creek in 1977 and on the right a photo of the same site after rehydration actions were implemented in 2006-07 and significantly improving the waterway. The pilot project was championed and paid for by TMI's founders Mr and Mrs Tony Coop involving Peter Andrews and Peter Hazel and the local catchment management authority to do these works as a pilot at Maloon Creek Natural Farms. Next photo, thanks. Next. Pilot project which is one hour drive east of Canberra quite literally on the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range and in the five years following the implementation of 17 stream bed control structures resulted in significant production and environmental outcomes at the property scale. And you can see some of the figures there. The farm manager at the time reported 60% increase in stock carrying capacity on the flood plains in our most productive area but there was also a dramatic improvement in volume and quality of water as well as significant improvements in vegetation growth and biodiversity. Next slide, thank you. Prior to the construction the photo on the left in the middle of the millennium drought barely remnant pools and barren gravel bar is what is you can see in the creek waterway there and rehydration works throughout this system of 3.1 kilometres of this pilot project area regenerated the aquatic and riparian vegetation and maintain larger and deeper pools of water throughout the millennium drought. Thank you. Next slide. The sheer bank on the left was battered and combined with rehydration works that supported the natural reestablishment and proliferation of native plants. Embattering the bank this increased the ability to establish plants and these plants on the bank and emergent aquatic plants that regenerated following this rehydration activity provide a buffer during future high flows. They also help reduce evaporation and greatly value add to the water quality and provide food and habitat for other flora and fauna and you know picture tells a thousand words in many cases. Next slide. Thanks. Reading the landscape and many geomorphological features to strategically locate structures and determine suitable height materials in some cases too smaller structures are suitable as opposed to a single large structure vegetation becomes part of the bio geo engineering structures that help support and maintain these structures and potentially continue to a greater material and build upon the initial structure effectively a living structure. The photos really highlight how vegetation can respond in turn helps flowing the flow filter and oxygenate the water moderate temperature pH and salt levels reduce evaporation and all the time providing food and habitat. Next slide. Thank you. So the downstream landholders who were initially skeptical of the pilot project observed the positive effects they experienced downstream and more consistent flows and improved water quality. They became the biggest advocates supporting expansion to a catchment scale such that in 2012 the stakeholder engagement workshop was conducted by TMI's chair Hon. Gary Nann and then CEO Michael Thomas and all were in favour of a catchment scale approach. It also attracted attention from landholders in the adjacent sand hills catchment who were adamant to be involved and included in the project. Landholder engagement is paramount to the ongoing success and ongoing viability of such projects. Ably supported by TMI staff and partners through the process of rehydrating the landscape and regenerating the land's production and environmental potential landholders have been actively involved in the project through workshops training and education monitoring and access to tools such as satellite data products that we'll see later and grazing management through other groups like my grazing. Landholders have conducted their own activities such as cultural burns, sought funding to repair wetlands and ephemeral waterways, eroded gullies, as habitat for rare and endangered flora and fauna. TMI have also worked with back-to-country people involved in traditional ceremony and knowledge transfer to next generation, traditional burn workshops and other cultural activities. Next slide, thanks. Initial seed funding in 2013 from Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation and founders Mr and Mrs Tony Coot and additional moderate grants from Southeast Local Land Services in Violia, the catchment scale project commenced. With the welcome funding support from the National Landcare Program Smart Farms, the Maloon Rehydration Initiative was able to step top to another level. The first of structures were implemented in late 2018 in the middle of what became an extreme drought. Yet by early 2020 the vegetation had responded well, led by the very experienced Peter Hazel and ably supported by other TMI staff, Bill McAllister, Max Brunswick, Penny Cooper, Cam Wilson and Ann Gibson and of course the landholders. Apologies if I've missed anyone out. Next slide, thank you. Another property with a fantastic result of vegetation response and the structure has all but disappeared under the vegetation growth and the biogeoengineering process is well underway. You may also note in the background the native trees and shrubs planted as tube stock during the extreme drought have survived and have also started to respond. TMI conducted volunteer treat planting days at many of the sites to assist with planting tens of thousands of native plants and a big shout out to all of those who were involved, including teams from the Green Army program when it was running. Next slide, thanks. On to another property in 2019, we can see the effects of the extreme drought in the photo on the left and by early 2020 with some much needed rain in February, March, the vegetation has started the process of repair and regeneration. Next slide, thanks. Eventually the drought broke properly with the 150 flood event in August 2020 and the in-stream structures helped slow the flow and redistributing the water onto the flood plains further rehydrating the surrounding landscape. The fluvial patterns of braided secondary channels are evident in the left image and that is how flood plain systems naturally need to function. Lots of silt and organic matter was deposited on the flood plains due to the major fires upstream and three months later the rehydrated flood plain burst with vegetation growth and spring. When big rains did occur, it is better to manage and slow the flow of water and have a thousand micro floods throughout the catchment's waterways than have all this water rushed down the waterways and the cumulative rush can cause catastrophic floods, harming people, their livelihoods, infrastructure and nature. Maloon Creek contributes to Sydney's water supply and what happens upstream can affect all downstream users including silt building up behind the dam wall and reducing the volume of water storage as an example. Next slide, thanks. Next slide, thanks. Under the monitoring and this is the hydrological part and the planning of the monitoring program was a team effort by the Science Advisory Committee chaired by Professor Steve Dovers and supported by many others from ANU, University of Canberra, Southeast Local Land Services, New South Wales DPI, the Biodiversity Conservation Trust and Xsiro subject matter experts. The team published the monitoring concept and design in the Australian Journal of Ecological Restoration and Management and the initial hydrological monitoring of the pilot project did commence in 2007 supported by New South Wales DPI with ex-staff member Tony Bernati managing the instruments and data and now Tony works for TMI. With the catchment scale project commencing in 2012 and further funding as described earlier, the monitoring program has expanded throughout the years and aimed to utilise technology as much as possible to automate monitoring and data management systems. And in 2019, Hydrotera was engaged to design and build the data management systems for hydrological monitoring that actually then ended up expanding to encompass the many other monitoring components that we'll talk about in the next slide. The list of most of the monitoring activities I've put forward there, there are others too, but these are all the big ones that have been implemented for the project. The monitoring components were conducted by TMI staff and many external subject matter experts to provide their monitoring expertise and plus involvement by landholders and volunteers. And a quick shout out to Dr Paul Cooper from ANU who is currently in his third year of sampling aquatic macro invertebrates and we look forward to those results. The previous results were right in the middle of the extreme drought and we would like to see how well the system has responded since. And long-term colleague and friend Dr Richard Thackway for his involvement with the project which included the vegetation, state and transition analysis and reporting and another long-term colleague and friend David Tongway for his assistance with landscape function analysis, training staff, landholders and students. Next slide please. It does take time to collect and collate enough ground and surface water data as well as other environmental monitoring results to allow for meaningful analysis and reporting. The results from the hydrological monitoring to date are that total volume is maintained and delivered over a longer period. The water quality is improved, particularly such elements as temperature, ease, electrical conductivity or salt, pH, turbidity and dissolved oxygen. And those water levels in the creek have been maintained at a higher level than previous with those stream bed control structures effectively raising the stream bed and adding somewhere between half a meter and maybe a meter of extra depth of water and creating deeper pools. And this improved water level are hydrating the immediate riparian zone which also then favours the increased vegetation and stability along the creek bank and bed, reducing evaporation and providing food and habitat. And of course the connecting of those hydrological processes between waterways and the adjacent lands and floodplains and the flood resilience that this also in turn generates when floods do eventually come through. An observation by TMI following the 2016 flood event that helped recharge the floodplains in the pilot project area and by 2018 in the grips of the extreme drought water stopped flowing from upstream into the pilot project area. However, water continued to flow out of the pilot project area downstream. Water continued to flow out of the pilot project area until early December 2019 and this could suggest that the water stored in the flood plains had sustained the creek flows albeit to a trickle towards the end. Yet the pools that remained maintained aquatic riparian vegetation and the fauna from far and wide and this vegetation ensured protection and readiness to respond when rains did eventually come and particularly protection during the major flood events. Next slide, thank you. Just as a bit of an example of the riparian assessment, rapid assessment and riparian condition. Note how the aquatic and riparian vegetation cover was maintained throughout the extreme drought providing many benefits as was described before. Food, habitat, reducing evaporation from wind and sun, stability and protection of the waterways banks and they also helped as a filtering effect to drop out sediment but also to slow down the flow. Thank you. Next slide. Some results and these are actually the latest results including the results from 2022s and so these haven't really been published yet so there's a bit of a sneak preview here but what we can see is transects along the Maloon Creek indicates good improvements and all sub-index scores of habitat cover natives, debris and features and rehydration works only commenced in late 2018 through to mid 2020 and keeping in mind two-thirds of these rock transects are yet to have stream works or rehydration works implemented within the vicinity and so the results suggest rehydration works have already had a positive effect on vegetation growth and habitat and many of these other factors even during the extreme drought with an improvement from 2017 to 2019 even though marginally and following the two flood events of 2020 and 2021 all sub-indices had moderate to good increases in scores particularly habitat cover and natives and by 2021 all sub-indices have improved since baseline and most have continued to have some improvement in the 2022 survey all sub-indices increased their respective minimum value in this latest survey results with sub-indices debris and features experiencing increases in mean and medium overall so the system is repairing and regenerating and we haven't finished yet with our rehydration works next slide please looking at it from a property management area and that's how we refer to our property management areas PMAs all transects where rehydration works have been implemented have experienced an overall improvement in rock score remembering PMA 7 and half of PMA where the last to have works conducted prior to these major floods and now they have started the regenerating process PMA 1 in the upper catchment is scheduled for works in 2023 and although its initial condition is good it has experienced a slight decline in 2022 and some of the transects in PMA 1 were badly affected by the fires in 2019 and 2020 that scorched much of the upper catchment including Teligander National Park and State Forest next slide thanks monitoring of frogs and a huge shout out for Sam Patmore and Anko Maria Hoffa they have really greatly helped with our monitoring next slide please so these are also the latest results you know the draft report has been received and we hope to publish this also very soon from Sam Patmore but just a quick summary is an update is that with many frog species in the southern table lands in significant decline and despite the lower detection rate in this latest 22 survey compared to previous seasons the overall results when looked at over four years of surveying the detection rates for most species are paired to indicate a relatively stable amphibian community in the Malone Creek system acknowledging the decline in parents tree frog and whistling tree frog along the creek waterways two key species that have declined across the region and potentially due to many factors such as the tritch advice fungus we also a next slide please we also conducted surveys at dams and wetland sites and in general the results are for the dam and wetland surveys indicate relatively robust and healthy local amphibian communities the 22 season saw the highest or equal highest detection frequency for four of the eight species including the plains froglet common eastern froglet eastern banjo frog and the whistling tree frog with the plains froglet and common eastern froglet recorded at all eight sites next slide please fish surveys we did an initial fish survey with thanks to University of Canberra and at that stage Dan Starrs from ANU and second survey was done by Ben Broadhurst and Ryan Clear and we're there currently conducting the third survey right now next slide please so the initial results is why we look forward to this third one because the the initial results indicated that the native native fish species Galaxus olidus responded well to rehydration works with many sites indicating significant increases from 2016 to 2022 particularly where the rehydration works have occurred at sites three four five and six sites one and two are the pilot project area and you will note that in 2016 the pilot project area did not record any of the pest species gambusia whole brookiei or mosquito fish and yet they were recorded in good numbers further down in the system and at the comparable water well catchment sites at Reedy Bombay and Jerrick combined creek following the floods we have noted that the mosquito fish has all but disappeared we would like you know we're keen to see is this been an effect of the in-stream structures or was it just the flood pushing them through we look forward to those results but we are promising results at least in the pilot project area that over time we do hope that the native species are able to outcompete the pest species and even push them out next slide please but surveys are also an important indicator species and thanks to Anthony Mulhall a local MRI landholder who is an avid photographer and has captured some great photos and of course thanks to Damon Oliver from New South Wales I would age through his tireless efforts to do the bird surveys and we look forward to the next group of surveys next slide please birds can be quite seasonal and migratory and have seasonal fluctuations however the composition and abundance are regarded by local expert Damon Oliver as good for the region during the extreme drought the results from 20 May 2018 survey did indicate a slight decline from the previous survey in May 2017 noting these surveys occurred before any rehydration works had occurred however rare and threatened species were noted during the drought of special note is the rare red capped robin that is normally found west of the great dividing range and was president Malone potentially to access the available food water and habitat bird surveys are planned for later this year and look a number of these species are in trouble and we're very happy to see such a good response of the species being present and other wild surveys were being done it was also noted healthy representations of platypus and water rats next slide please I mentioned the satellite monitoring that is being done and we've partnered with cybo labs with Phil tickle addressing such activity of me monitoring ground cover tree and shrub cover change over time there are many other products available from seabed labs and there is also a portal that is available to our MRI landholders including machine learning to estimate biomass production I'll just this graph here is one example of a product that can be generated which is looking at the pasture cover levels on the pilot project area and compared with properties in the five kilometer radius the prior to the 2006 rehydration works pasture cover is low and is in the bottom percentiles of comparative properties of their cover levels in the five kilometer radius and post-rehydration a positive response in pasture cover that is maintained through the Millennium drought and with expected seasonal fluctuations with you know quite extreme winters and summers in the region when the drought broke in 2010 there is a noticeable increase in cover levels and now regularly in the mid-range the next major rehydration event is the 2016 flood and another jump in ground cover levels following this event this suggests that the flooding event may have recharged the floodplain which provides the soil moisture for plants to grow this recharge continued to support pasture growth it was also through the extreme drought of 2017 and to early 2020 and in comparison with nearby properties was it looks like it's increasing it's a relative factor but this is also to do with the fact of coupled with grazing management processes that also helped to increase that viability of the pasture response and the resilience through those tough years so overall a significant improvement in pasture response when rainfall does occur ground cover continued to improve during extreme drought relative to nearby properties improved response to rainfall and seasonal growth patterns and resilience during the drought and greater residual cover to protect soil when floods occurred and ability to respond faster next slide please so landscape rehydration is not limited to waterways and floodplains in fact improved water management and landscape rehydration needs to occur from the ridge lines to the waterways as a whole of landscape approach reading the landscape and assessing the natural landscape features to determine the location and size of a series of step contours along the ridge line at an MRI property can fast track these rehydration works when especially coupled with land management actions these have slowed surface water runoff and spread laterally across the ridge and in doing so has increased the amount of water infiltration that then hydrates the hill slopes below through gravity spreading that water at a much slower pace through the soil profile keeping in mind these were constructed in the middle of the extreme drought and these wetland species self germinated on their own accord providing much needed water food and habitat for native flora and fauna and did not go dry thousands of trees and shrubs and tube stock were planted from late 2018 and three years later they are well established next slide please here's another view along the ridge lines so that you can see just how well this ground cover has ground cover and the tree and shrub cover have responded and it's a phenomenal growth response considering that we didn't the drought didn't break really until the middle of 2020 and what we've the ground cover has rarely been so prolific and instead of hard ground and with bare patches it is now covered with a diverse and high plant cover not seen for decades and for those that have visited the site will agree the ground has almost a spongy feel when walking across the ridge meanwhile it is still supplying feed and habitat to a large mob of resident roos deer and many other animals next slide please so why does this matter well landscape rehydration is fundamental to farm and environmental outcomes for many of the evidence and monitoring that we've just gone through it is an integrated land management required you know the works that we've done helps slow that water down and create that better management of water but then it also needs to be coupled with good land management and land use decisions that then better manage in a more integrated sense the soils water and vegetation relevant to the location of the landscape and that climate so we do need to slow down water and reduce that surface water runoff and the erosion that can occur carrying off much needed resources and infiltrating that water that then not only feeds the plants but also and in doing so the relationship with the soil microbia that also helps to build soil and the fertility and cycling of nutrients so in a way it's what's what's we're doing here is we're addressing the local or small water cycle and by doing so you're actually reconnecting and re-establishing those carbon and nitrogen cycles and the waterways are also a way of looking at the essential corridors across country that connect landholders but also are vital vital connectivity pathways for flora and fauna and water is life but it can also be very destructive as we've witnessed more recently in Australia and the best result we're seeing and we've looked at it from a property scale but the results already at a catchment scale do suggest an even greater accumulated effect for better results now integrated systems thinking is a way to enable these significant improvements in farm productivity and the numerous environmental co-benefits and outcomes and the next slide please so we're on to the next section of what does this mean in terms of scaling up across regional Australia next slide please so just quickly touching on where the Maloon Institute's staff are now operating and we have staff based in north Queensland and WA and northern New South Wales and have deployed into many of the regions and that map gives you an indication that there's we've already covering many of the bioregions and particularly even catchment scale in the north Queensland area throughout south Queensland and into Victoria and some major projects in western Australia well I'm very excited also about the project back in my initial areas of my career in the northern territory which is including not only properties by Bob Purvis who's been doing rehydration works in the arid country for the last 30 plus years but also working with local indigenous groups who manage properties in the area as well and using their knowledge to value add to how these rehydration or landscape management actions can help to rehydrate and regenerate and TMI has recently launched its training and education program for land managers practitioners educators and school tertiary students training programs have several levels starting with beginner through to expert and is suitable for anyone interested to learn more next slide please and as Richard touched on before we receive backing and support from New South Wales DPI to develop a selection tool or heat map for New South Wales to rank the suitability of catchments and sub catchments for implementing landscape rehydration the tool is designed for users to assess where potential cost benefit to invest resources next slide please give you a bit of an overview of what this tool is composed of it has four major modules physical ecological planning or regulatory and economic to simplify without taking away from the enormity of the task each of these four modules is comprised of numerous spatial layers that are analyzed through computational pathways to generate a score that these are further computation there are further computational pathways to combine and generate a ranking many thanks to the subject matter experts who have provided suitable data and advice to inform the analysis pathways many thanks to the exceptional group at JB Pacific conducting the spatial analysis and of course Hydrotera who has been an extraordinary partner and the project manager Andrew Wallen has been a sheer leader in that path next slide please as you're going to appreciate there is an intense amount of data processing that occurs and the outputs and end users interface will allow users to assess ranking from a nodal point to sub catchment and bigger picture catchment scale across New South Wales the tool is a clever indicator of where to conduct an on-ground assessment to confirm appropriate applications of landscape rehydration to maximise cost benefit and investment next slide please many thanks to Justin Borowitz and Kirstie Yates from ANU who provided these following slides ANU has a long-running partnership that has grown to include numerous faculties with TMI and to maximise the benefits of landscape rehydration land use and management that addresses landscape function and ecosystem services there are many land use and management options for farmers to consider that do more than sustainable it is possible to regenerate the natural landscape function and there are plenty of good practitioners out there who are in this space and you know I'd love to be able to mention them all but the principles are to manage soils plants and water in an integrated systems thinking approach that is respective to the local conditions climate soils topography and of a course aligned with the land owners desired outcomes diversity of plants and animals is another key element that needs to be included into the solution to manage and regenerate landscapes it is overall ecosystem function that generates a productive and resilient land this should also integrate First Nations land management practices for fire wetlands and waterways and diversity of flora and fauna with catchment communities these actions will in turn provide increased production through improved soil health increased plant available water increased pollinators and encourage natural predators of pest species as an example of some of the farm production benefits these actions also generate significant environmental outcomes such as improved water management less erosion improved water quality that benefit the associated aquatic flora and fauna improved habitat for flora and fauna that extends well beyond the waterways and increase connectivity for wildlife corridors these all add up to ecosystem services that value add to the fertility and productivity of the land and with appropriate land use and management these combined actions can generate significant outcomes for farm productivity environmental objectives and can build resilient a resilience to climate extremes of drought fire and flood next slide please this does not mean going back to subsistence farming instead there are plenty of tech developments that assist with mapping planning monitoring and modelling that provide greater ability for precision agriculture similarly with more developments and robotics and AI or artificial intelligence that can provide further opportunities to conduct precision agriculture next slide please and as discussed previously managing the land with an integrated systems approach that can be scaled to suit a property through to a catchment scale relative to those local climate conditions and geomorphological features to be considered and the top group of images on the left there you know we've got a classic sort of you know there's one extreme of where every square inch of the farm is is is farmed and the far right you know a system of land where it's you know relatively all natural or not being classically farmed for crop and pasture production and then there's a mixture of what it could look like in between looking at different ways of how you can align with your farm practices but also using such things as waterways as a water pathways through the landscape as a way of where you need to really look at possibilities of slowing that flow down to keep that water and to slow it down and to rehydrate your landscape that then adds to that productivity and those corridors can also be wildlife corridors so a way of how can you integrate both environmental aspects and your and keep your farm viable remembering that there's many co-benefits that actually value add to your production systems and so there are different options of how this can be adapted and applied and as it is a living system it will change over time and potentially continue to regenerate and allow for additional actions or options to be applied as this system rebuilds like state and transition thinking as the system transitions and regenerates other plants and animals can be introduced a farming example could be cover cropping and rotate annual crops that add further benefits towards regenerating land and particularly managing soil health other options involve a variety of livestock that provide a landscape function to manage vegetation or improve soil native flora and fauna can be improved through strategic planting aligned with the natural landscape function reading that landscape and consider considers overall ecosystem services these plants can intercept and slow down water and increase infiltration and additional benefits of reducing wind and sun evaporation habitat or shelter for animals and creating a microclimate effect that can attract more rain that in turn is captured and managed by the landscape rehydrating and further regenerating more broadly these ecosystem services provide the food fiber water habitat and influence the what the climate that we all rely upon on earth that we humans are intrinsically a part of and need to manage better for our future survival collectively this will reduce the pressure on our planet systems such as climate and the atmosphere that supports and protects all life on earth next slide please there's a whole lecture or let's say there's a whole series of lectures based around all this and i'm trying to summarize this that effectively the sun is a major source of energy for earth and without that we would be another barren rock in space nature has evolved many varied plants and animals that have generated and managed earth's biomes to a state of relative climatic calm considering earth's history and provided an abundance and variety of food fiber and habitat a dehydrated land has reduced ability to grow plants that protect and nurture soil increases susceptibility to further degrade and if degradation continues it leads to desertification whereas a rehydrated landscape has increased ability to grow plants that protect and nurture soil increased ability to regenerate and build resilience and this is of major relevance to australia the driest inhabited continent on earth Walter Yanar ex-siro um and good friend and colleague has stated the landscape function used to capture and infiltrate nine out of ten raindrops on a set area and these days it is more like one in ten and the rest is runoff eroding soil nutrients organic matter and other pollutants that come that then confine its way into the waterways also good friend and colleague David Tomway his research highlights the importance of landscape function to increase natural systems function rather than a landscape that is leaky and losing resources next slide please and again there's a lot in that we talked about here but a very brief summary of that from the previous slide we recognize much of the energy and resources come from the sky and atmosphere including our climate that is driven by the large water cycle that is made up of many small local water cycles such as at a catchment scale and by improving water management at the local scale plants soil atmosphere this drives the local water cycle that in turns drives the carbon and nitrogen cycles this results in improved landscape function and ecosystem services that can benefit both farm productivity and environmental outcomes when managed in an integrated systems approach ecosystem services extend right through to the smallest soil microbe that are cumulatively the engine room of soil health the healthy soil is a living organism and through microbial activities cycles nutrients and feeds plants while building soil even sequestering carbon I recall the late general Michael Jeffrey when heading soils for life would say a teaspoon of healthy soil can contain one billion microbes next slide please and we are the only ones doing this sort of thinking and application and so I'm not here to many of those to some of those in that space in the international applications and in particular the MRI project is recognized by UN sustainable development solutions network as one of five important projects and catchment scale projects similar to this but in an even drier climate by Dr Laura Norma from the USGS with incredible results and I've left some links there for a presentation of those results a brief overview and a research paper of the modelling outcomes there's also many in the UN's water and climate group there's a brief overview there and many others conducting research and application in this area and just to name a few Michael Kravick Jackie Nationalman pardon me Abin Abbey Kinden Smith Andrea Malberg Zach Weiss and Jeremiah Martin Dr Regendra Singh and Roger Savery there there are so many as an examples of their different facets of where they specialize in that integrated systems thinking and water management next slide please so in summary after all of that I'll quickly just touch on that the monitoring results that we do have improved water quality and quantity and that has ramifications both locally and all downstream users significant improvement in the environmental outcomes both again locally and this extends out an increased farm productivity and resilience through those climatic extremes that Australia has experienced with drought fire and flood and this and the ever increasing cycles of those three climatic events and the fact that it seems to be that they're getting worse and how do we scale up and out well landscape rehydration as we can see and we are aiming to do this with demonstration sites across Australia and many bioregions that it can be adapted to all regions of Australia and internationally as those other examples are testament using technology to assess inform monitor and adjust management to maximize these outcomes and the support for land managers in education training and transitioning and the use of tools for ongoing management the implications and opportunities for land management are many and varied and so really there are so many options and yet it does mean that it is quite flexible and can be tailored to the end user's needs and desires there are numerous co-benefits for environmental outcomes we do need to integrate First Nations knowledge and capacity to assist catchment scale helps build resilience in regional communities to regenerate productivity environmental and social capital and a big shout out to the one catchment group led by Mike stewards and ably supported by many other subject matter experts in their quest to operate at that scale and may I also line point to our executive summary by a wonderful PhD student who did work for with TMI Daniel Kenny there's a link on our website to what prevents the adoption and of regenerative agriculture and what can we do about it and it lists many opportunities of what could be done and a final note this does require all stakeholders to do their part from grassroots through to all levels of government landholders are key to the driver of this change for their benefit but they're not on their own local community groups and NGOs can assist with resourcing training education and adapting change at that local scale but all levels of government local state and federal need to be on board to assist in resourcing this transition to enable change including policy and regulatory frameworks to meet national and international targets and outcomes next slide please I'll just leave you with that that that's what we're you know that's a bit of a the extreme ends of it but there is the pathway through that rehydration and regeneration thank you Richard Luke that was fantastic thank you very much I guess um it's not a personal note hydrogen has been on a real journey with the Malone Institute over the last four years a couple of I guess things that we've learned on that is that to really monitor the scale at the scale that this is applied and you know quantify that the benefits is challenging and expensive right it's a very labour intensive some of the data that Luke shared today is is really driven by a lot of volunteer time as well as a lot of professional time and the government did put four million dollars behind the MRI to allow them to build a catchment and monitor it to that level of rigor so it's fantastic to have the lines of evidence that do show the benefits the second thing I'd say is that it took a really smart technical advisory group to work out how you really can then take that data and measure a transition if you like and they talk about state and transition models where you don't really have a paired catchment situation to compare with which used to be the sort of traditional way to do this and I think it's fantastic um that approach in terms of being able to progressively see the changes in the performance of these catchments whether it's ecological performance or hydrology or whatever um so that way of thinking was also something that we learned on this project and I think has a lot of merit to be applied wherever we're making these land use changes to really measure the benefits or other all right so another great learning the application of satellite data was another thing which I thought was tremendous and the work that cyber labs does and the ability to convert measurements to go back to the 1970s when these satellites first were put up into space and to effectively reanalyze that sort of raw data to produce metrics like how biomass has changed since the 1970s all the way through to now it's incredibly valuable because it's very hard to get good time series data to see how things are transitioning but if you can couple sort of some I guess benchmarking measurements on the ground with that satellite data it's very very powerful as another line of evidence of change um look there've been many many um learnings for hydroterror on this project um probably the biggest one of the lot is nothing happens without passion and the Maloon Institute have an incredible amount of passion and I think Luke Peale encompasses that passion and you would have heard it in his voice today and this journey of Maloon it's sort of you know it's 20 years plus and lives off very generous donation of two farm properties to sustain it and I think what they've done is discover one of the bigger solutions to the degradation in Australia and they've done a great job of getting enough scientific rigor behind it to really put it forward as part of a credible solution to getting Australia on a more sustainable footing so thank you very much to Luke and TMI for all that work now without further ado I think we better move to Q&A we always thought it was going to be a bit tight and uh Phil if you'd like to turn on your camera um we will move through to that maybe I will open with a question to Phil um around how he sees soil and soil management playing a role in parallel with the sort of rehydration works that the Maloon Institute are doing yeah look um I'd have to say Luke having spoken to you a few times over the past four or five years that it's a fantastic piece of work that you've presented and it's very much in line with where we need to go in Australia and across agriculture and your your talk was was greatly appreciated so fantastic well done thank you everyone knows that I'm a lot more focused on the on the soil side the soil carbon side as well as so the rehydration of soil is hugely important part of the landscape as well as just the catchments so um the tie-up with that is tremendously connected with catchments in terms of of regenerative agriculture in that if you don't build up your soil organic matter you don't infiltrate the rate at which Luke is encouraging us to achieve so it is very important not just to have what Yeoman used to call which is um sort of upon to a plowing concepts of the 50s which has been more developed um by Luke and his team more recently on on the ridges but to actually have right across the whole farm increased infiltration to hold water at source or to hold the rainfall at the point it falls so that the nine drops in ten can infiltrate and the one drop we hold up in the river system is is the ideal circumstance that we need to look for so the integration of managing your soil infiltration rate through organic matter and managing reducing your runoff also through holding the soil particles together with organic matter so the glue that holds them together so they don't blow apart is important part of the rehydration equation but without detracting from this fantastic talk we've just had from Luke. Thanks very much Phil so I think the resounding message here is that need to manage both the hydrology and the soil to achieve good water balance management and also to get those productivity benefits that we're looking at. Now I'm going to move to the questions that have come in initially the early bird questions and then we have a lot more in the Q&A so just letting everyone know that we're going to be running a bit over time which is a tradition of Hydrotera's webinars. Here we go okay so we've got six early bird questions well done to those who have sent those in. First question what are the benefits of landscape dehydration and how can we differentiate a landscape dehydration sorry I can't see that last bit that's hidden under a text box. How can we differentiate a landscape dehydration from soil dehydration? I think there might be a bit of a typo there I mean rehydration possibly there so I'll read it as what are the benefits of landscape rehydration and how can we differentiate a lands a dehydrated landscape or from oh sorry landscape dehydration from soil dehydration well you can't really uncouple that because it is it's a scalable thing but I think and again Phil touched on it and I'm sure I've covered on a number of those things but you know the benefits are local but also extend further down so whether it's landscape rehydration at that top of the ridge line as that example and and and by getting that infiltration how you can actually retain or slow down the water you know because it's always cycling plants will use it it transpires and then it might you know go back up in the atmosphere and then it might even come back as dew or rain it's always constantly cycling and what doesn't get picked up by the plants is still in the soil and it may even get down into the groundwater so there's a number of pathways of where water can go from a single drop and so what it's also doing then to try and answer this question is it is feeding the soil and of course I think we all understand that unless you're trying to grow cactus that most plants do require some level of plant available water okay thanks Luke um next question what role can managed aquifer recharge in the form of underground dams or wheels play in restoring rural aquifers I guess I could probably field that one yeah it's um really is quite location specific to how much benefit you get and the approach you take to aquifer recharge and it's been various studies done around Australia of looking at what areas have the best opportunities for that and that relates to the geology and soil types also relates to the actual water balance itself that's in the area the rainfall and that sort of thing what I would say is that we've been looking at the TMI sites in a lot of detail as a Pizomata network of over 100 wells and looking at the response of those to the leaky weir structures which are those structures you've seen in Luke's photos and you do see in what some people call bank storage increase in the amount of water that's held there and that would certainly be showing a positive effect of leaky weirs on recharging I guess those neostream aquifer units out from that so hitting further out onto your floodplains the story is quite variable and Leah Moore has been doing a really detailed hydrogeological study of the floodplains there and there's many processes that are affecting it so one thing we've concluded out of this study is there's many benefits of leaky weirs but you can't assume you're going to get uniform rehydration of floodplains because the hydrogeology is quite complex in floodplains a lot of sort of discontinuous stream former stream beds and that sort of thing lead to complicated hydrogeology what we have land is that the by retaining the water in the catchments and spreading that flooding across the floodplains in a lower energy sort of scenario there's more time for the water to infiltrate and you certainly get great benefits of recharge of those shallow aquifer systems from that water that's ponded on top of those floodplains so that's probably a bit of an answer to that question I might just add there too that also with the increased height of water in the stream there's also then a hydraulic gradient that then holds the water back that's in the groundwater aquifers from by gravity just draining straight out of the creek so that water in the stream will actually hold that water back also in the floodplain aquifers and so as as stream levels drop and it will allow that groundwater still continue to flow out but again at a slower rate so it is about just slowing that water down and retaining it as long as possible but particularly that increased the stream the structures in the creek are actually helping to maintain a higher water level even during low flow times that holds that water back just for that little bit longer I think it's a really important point and the data has shown that there is a real pressure response between the head of the water in the stream and those piezometers that we're monitoring so that is definitely occurring all right we better keep charging on how do you go about quantifying the legal or financial benefits of these techniques yes that is a very good question and look you know difficult is probably the summary of that legal side of things from a from a regulatory point of view look the spatial data does allow a certain amount and then there's going to have to be some assumptions based around that again similarly for financial benefits I mean how do you put a how do you put a dollar value on the environmental co-benefits is is always a difficult thing accounting for nature group that we've been working with as well as others that you know that people have been trying and grappling with this and I would have to say that we're going to just use some key indicators of the best spatial data and make some assumptions around that to just give people an idea but it's near impossible to put a defined financial benefit but there are many benefits and then it will also be dependent on the local circumstances of course can I make a comment as well Richard just to augment what Luke said it does depend on the circumstances but just quickly look at the legal side the Environmental Protection Act got changed and updated in Victorian 2017 and includes general duties to the environment which is also in the Queensland Act and I think has just come into the West Australian Act so the general duties of environment actually require you to ensure that you don't have adverse impacts of emissions leave your boundaries under the Victorian law it does allow adjacent impacted people to actually take an action on their neighbor without the EPA doing it so the question comes down to how long can you continue to run poor practice results in muddy water and no basal flow during droughts entering the adjoining property or dust storms hitting the city or weed build up spreading to adjoining properties so the general duties of care are yet to be tested in rural communities but and they're still very new even in urban but they're still able to pick up what's called diffuse pollutant impacts and those diffuse pollutants are things such as sediment runoff and streams and reduced water quality flow during droughts and quality in quantity so that's one area just to keep an eye out for in the future is what could be the legal disincentive to not move your practice and the other is the financial benefits so we have in terms of soil organic matter lots and lots of farmers that we can demonstrate have had huge responses and one good example of in the last two years of the very wet periods on the east coast is a sugarcane farmer whose extremely regenerative who we've been associated with in developing certain techniques with the sugarcane industry has managed to get a harvest off in the last two years where others in his neighborhood and this person's below two meters ahd um unable to get machinery on because they went unable to get machinery on after about eight to ten days the sugarcane be a more resilient brass than most dies but it's inundated so he ended up with a four hundred thousand dollar increase two hundred thousand per year because he could get his machinery on and cut where the others couldn't so the financial return in some instances and uh equal all the investment in one year to get there so it does entirely depend on circumstances and situations but getting machinery on and off because you've improved the infiltration or because you've rehydrated the landscape other good example is less foot rot um when you're dealing with circumstances of regenerative um paddocks you're doing in a circumstance where the sheep don't or or follow multiple tracks all over the place and and puddle the ground um so the water can't infiltrate properly so you end up with with wet feet constantly the sheep then tend to walk to um either the farmer's pathway the the gravel pathway to the troughs or to just one track because they don't like getting birds in their feet so they prefer to follow each other on one track when the grass is long and the net effect is they work their toes and their toenails regularly and don't get the mold and the fungi build up and they're on dry ground so those are regenerative practices in the last 12 months have way less foot problems with the sheep than those that aren't so there's numerous impacts that can occur from both the soil and um creek hydration the river hydration that are positive and financially demonstrable great examples Phil great examples um I guess just to add one more so great question uh from a financial benefits point of view and and the tie into the legal side of things is the world is changing and the ability for you know primary producers to actually export to various markets around the world is getting linked more and more to sustainable performance and particularly you know the EU is introducing various legislation which is going to mean we have to prove that we are operating in sustainable ways and this is certainly this you know catchman scale approach to this is certainly one of those things that's going to help us in that direction so from a financial benefit point of view access to markets is another example that's pretty important next question please talk about the measured evidence based outcomes achieved to mitigate flood peaks during large rainfall events Luke do you want to try that one or Phil yeah um look I think it's it's hard to hard to do and you know again there's only so much I can stick into the presentation but what we have noted is that the flood peaks are lower and and if you look at a hydrograph that instead of being a really high peak and then dropping away as the system just quickly drains out and you're left almost with a dry creek bed again that we've got a lower peak and we end up with a longer tail that's the general concept of most of these waterways and how they would operate when you do that flood mitigation using this sort of technique and even better still when you also incorporate more broader land management land use actions that again the examples we've talked about and Phil put to all those benefits of in the first place trying to make sure that you don't have yep there's a good example that what you're also trying to do is get that water to infiltrate locally and and most importantly then you then don't have this accumulated runoff locally that then rushes into that stream they could cause such a peak and acuatively of all those other landholders in the catchment if they do the same you should get a much more rounded and I know I know this is conceptually but you know what in reality when the systems are working well that that's those graphs are pretty much reality what that one does show is that you've got an increased baseline at the end where it continues to come out for the seasons afterwards so you get the peak floods that rapid and fast are called a flash flood that you can see there where not only the river responds very very quickly because it doesn't have features in it to flood the landscape but the runoff from the soil because is using a dispersive soil that might be hard might previously been hard set with the raindrop splash bling the fines up to the surface so you just get massive runoff with a heap of erosion so I just as you were talking I had that slide that I gave to a talk yesterday so I just thought I'd pop it up to look at what is the impacts between a hydrated landscape compared to a degraded landscape so yeah I'll stop that and flip the share back oh no well done Phil good good intercept yeah love it nothing like a good schematic to really help describe next question Richard yes I've just got to work out how to get back to that now Phil I'm sorry Richard maybe just read them out well here we are I think this is it it's very sneaky I think we call that webinar ambush okay um the question five how might rehydration impact soil carbon content yeah good question again and I think that will bounce between myself and Phil here but look largely another way of how I've heard it put to me by other experts including people like Walter Yenner is if you really want to see your microbes and we see this either in the aquatic invertebrates or the microbes in the soil just add water and if you've also got a functioning soil then your microbes will you know they'll they'll power along not only will they power the plants with the nutrient cycling and and in doing so of course it is that natural processes that plants are processing and and converting sunlight into sugars and and and pulling in carbon and nitrogen and turning that into other processes including soil carbon that you then end up getting a cyclical benefit and and again another way of putting it is for every one part of soil carbon that you can input or increase in the soil you can increase your soil water holding capacity by 8 to 10 times and so you are getting an exponential benefit each time that you're getting those plants and soil and soil microbes with more water available plant available water through a hydrated system that drives that whole water carbon and nitrogen cycling and and that and the different levels of storage of short-term storage in a plant or short to medium if it's might be even longer if it's a tree but particularly the longer more stable carbon outputs in your soil Phil I'm glad you actually said the the plant available water because organic matter doesn't actually increase the amount of water available in so it doesn't increase the amount of water in the soil it increases the water available to the plant that's right it really elongates the zone of water that the plant can take from and so that that's a key difference there's been lots of papers released saying that I you know increasing carbon doesn't increase water storage which is true but it increases that available for the plant two key things about building carbon up one is without water you can't do it that's the first thing there two is that between 30 and 70 percent of water is sourced locally so building up hydration of streams and the riparian zone actually has a direct impact on the on the neighboring paddocks so the small myths and Jews that Luke was talking about is what you lose when you have a degraded landscape and that helps build the carbon up in the adjoining paddocks so your local small water cycle has a huge impact from from the river riparian zone to the adjoining paddocks is the charge in the soils a cation exchange capacity controls the maximum you can get a soil carbon in the soil so water controls the annual rate so you can irrigate you can increase the rate you encourage a small water cycle back you increase the rate so hence the function of eco corridors is huge in that trees are able to do evapo transport from the river and the river sediments to encourage the buildup of the small water cycle which then allows more water which what they call west of the new they call it square clouds the farmers that run regenerative regenerative practices or very strongly conservation practice end up with more summer summer rainstorms and thunderstorms and get more rain on their property and the adjoining farmers call it oh they're lucky they have square clouds but that's the small water cycle in action so it's important to consider those factors and finally though Luke's touched on um your biome can provide nitrogen the biome can't actually provide phosphate it can't be pulled from the air but the biome can release the phosphorus from the rock quicker and that means you need more fungi than bacteria to do that so having an environment that that has greater fungi over bacteria does result in humification of about five percent of the organic matter created which is enough to increase organic matter but if you mineralize a hundred percent without humification of at least five then you degrade the organic matter in the soil so the principles are simple some of the applications difficult um and so how do you get fungi to exceed bacteria in a degraded system does require a little bit of work and takes a year or two but having the eco corridors and the riparian zones you see a movement out of white woodrock fungi particularly which you might know as mushrooms amongst other things moving out beyond 30 to 50 meters from trees so it is important to look at these improvement production functionality of your paddock that comes from an eco corridor don't just see an eco corridor as loss of land so all those things are exceptionally important but looking at rehydration alone without knowing how to trick up bits of bits of pieces in your paddock will take longer if you're not aware of some of the other issues of bringing up your phosphate bring up your sulfate and how you go about doing that and it's different for both cropping and misfarming and straight pastoral systems but all of them are able to do it all right thanks Phil um we'd better keep moving um just just a comment on that one of the key things that's come out of this dpi project we've been doing to look at suitability and that sort of things is a really good indicator of success here is planned available water and I was surprised to find that both the dpi and the bureau of meteorology actually provide planned available water forecasting not only based on actual rainfall but also forecast rainfall including uh measures that take into account or modeling I should say that takes into account climate change so I think there's a lot to be said for us to start measuring and uh looking more closely at planned available water as a success or otherwise indicator all right number six are they still working with peter andrews if not why not hmm that's a bit of a loaded bun look oh no I don't look up with uh we've had a good and long relationship with peter andrews and and his son stewart and uh you know I'm sure that those that have watched the Australian story will realize that you know it's been a quite a quite a journey and uh and and if anything it's been quite a uh collaborative as well as complimentary um peter and stewart are certainly going and uh great guns with their business now with that uh you know I think that that was help seeded with uh with tmi and that they're really busy going across the country doing their work we're busy you know doing our work and we're we always welcome um the any future opportunities to be working um closely again with peter and stewart andrews um and uh look at the same token I think also again hats off to tmi and its law committee led by matt edgerton morbiden and jerry baits as as amongst others and lots of input from tmi staff in dealing with the regulatory aspects that have uh you know had have caused uh previous challenges uh with peter and stewart's work and so uh you know this is why we see it is that um we are all better off we are all better off working collaboratively where possible um and uh and uh and rather than trying to sort of um either outcompete each other as well I mean and this is why I think uh working with groups as we have these amazing partnerships that we've developed that we can see how beneficial that can be so yeah next question thanks luke all right so we have 19 questions at the moment on the q&a but you keep going there's going to be all over time but uh it's an incredible uh story the tmi story and I think we should keep going until luke falls off his chair so without further ado um and whilst we have so many people still here let's continue so first question from simon winfield when drought broke in 2020 notable increase in pasture levels is this just hydration work or have properties implemented pasture management changes all right g'day simon I'm sure that I know that we've we've met before and worked together um look the the good thing about this catchment scale project is is that um even though we have touched on it that we don't have a truly paired situation but I see it that there's sort of uh um internally we've got a range of different land use and management styles um and there's also uh different histories on those properties so there's a lot of variables in there so to try and answer your question what we've seen is that there's there's probably a certain amount of baseline um response just due to the breaking of the drought and then there's also you know that historical context of where it's coming from and I know that even phil's touched on some of these answers before and then there's where the difference is of how long of the rehydration works been in going and how long have the land use management practice has been going and that combination it's it's near impossible to sort of separate them out solely but when I've looked at the satellite imagery response comparison of those floodplain areas of those different land use land management and we also see it a little bit reflected in the rock um the rock surveys results as well that there is a discernable difference between uh those actions and actually where phil and I uh first met at the national soils conference I put forward that I did some other analysis of looking at those comparisons of infiltrometer or infiltration rates on those floodplain soils based on those land management and the difference between regenerative and conventional uh let's just say regenerative we were getting measurements of eight to ten thousand millimeters per hour infiltration rate which is a phenomenal amount and at the far further end of long-term conventional farming methods it was closer to on average around about six to eight hundred millimeters per hour infiltration rate so if we talk about the ability of when these rehydration works happen and if we do get a flood event that then spills out and recharges that and puts water out onto the surface then the more your land can soak that water up and act like a big sponge and store it down below and have it available for plant available water or even recharging the aquifers for longer term all of that adds up and I would say that you know that much of the evidence does support the fact that um there are major benefits in the combination of landscape rehydration and land management actions and you you can do one or the other and you would still get benefits but I feel that when you actually combine the two given all the reasons that we've talked about and Phil highlighted right down to the soil microbes all that other interaction of water cycling there really is no doubt that then it really it just amplifies it much further when done in combination thanks Luke next question Nikki Cannon has there been a change in weed species in survey areas it's a good question survey areas look again it comes down to land management and land use actions there are some people that of course still you know actively spaying their weeds and then there's others that are doing a more regenerative approach and and using land management actions for the medium longer term goal of transitioning weeds out and I think that the key underlying there is looking at what that plant is if we want to call it a weed whatever that plant is there's always plant dynamics and if there's a plant that's come in that you don't want be it a thistle or whatever it may then it's a matter of good appropriate land management actions say cattle grazing or other grazing forms that there's a way of doing it that you're actually treating the cause not the symptom and you can spy that weed but you still haven't dealt with the symptom I mean the plant's gone away and you feel better but you know guaranteed it'll be back next season or if you deal with what's the cause is and those plants are learning again how to read that landscape but part of it is those plants that if you see certain plants popping up that they they actually give an indication that there's something out of balance either with the soil fertility or compaction or some other you know there's some other thing that's causing it so in other words deal with what's causing it and you'll get a much better response in long term and so have we seen a change well yes we have seen even with the landscape rehydration there has been a burst of plant growth and some of it's actually in say areas that we're struggling you know so let's say a creek bank that was previously barren and there will be pine ear plants that jump in there now that could be blackberry but it also could be just native species that are those pine ear plants and you will see that I mean that's that's what the landscape is trying to tell you when a place is so degraded it might be that it's pine ear plant species that jump in there but an area that maybe is a little bit more highly functional and already has seed bank there and other then the proliferation we've actually noticed and the diversity is so much more mature in the response and in doing so you can actually suppress those unwanted species be it particularly with added grazing management as one of those pathways of high intensity grazing and and good spell of duration good duration of spelling sorry good answer Luke thank you we've got Simon Winfield has got quite prolific with his questions will a program address symptom not the cause what is your view on native riparian planting without hydration works is this still addressing the symptom not the cause yeah so I think again underlying it is plants will always struggle to establish and and and prosper without plant available water number one and so look I think there's many great examples of native tree plantings right across Australia and the wonderful land care network and its movement of what it's done and many other programs that have supported that and yet I think that there's plenty of examples where sadly with all the best intentions of doing these amazing plantings that not all native plants have actually survived and part of that is because you're planting those plants either well fundamentally where the system is dehydrated and drained so they don't get get to establish the second part is is that maybe if it isn't such a degraded state that there's different plant species that initially start that pioneering and regenerative pathway and in due course there will be other plants that then come in to do a next as you state and transition to the ultimate if it was to be that your aim is to get to a pristine state in reflection to the willows look the the willows were as I stated they were well intention but they they again dealt with the symptom and I think we're more mature and in our understanding and thinking are we going to rip the willows out well as you can see in a number of those photos that those willow revetments are still there and in many cases we work with them and that they are underlying providing a function and some level of stability and to pull those out that's 30 years worth of work and stability that that will take time to replace so we do the rehydration so we're actually allowing more water to be in the system number one and the second part is with the other active tree planting and of course being quite strategic with what plants do we need that suit the purpose in this location and that's different from ridge lines down to the bottom of the flood plains that there is an appropriate plant and nature has plenty of options locally as well as go and talk to your First Nations people to even find out more and how you might transition from whatever state you're in to the preferred state and yet I would say that while you have any plants wanted or unwanted you look to transition and eventually you can transition out the unwanted plants all right thanks Luke um the next question from Simon's about you know the flood hydrographs effectively so I think we've covered that four um one after we haven't covered so in your biodiversity monitoring do you monitor the level of fungi in soils and their ability to hold soil preventing landslips erosion and loss of nutrients look the the short answer is no we don't there's only so much the funding can cover and I you know I could have easily probably spent another three or four million dollars to cover all of those things and then look we understand too that to cover the high variation in soil either physical chemical or biological aspects is can be quite costly because you need to do a certain amount of intense sampling and the cost of doing that analysis to be able to statistically analyse and so you know yes the short answer is no and yet the answer would be is I wish we could um Phil might be a question for yourself um do you know of approaches to be able to monitor fungi in soils that are not so expensive um yeah it's a systems approach so science drops down into compartmentalisation quite readily so during my career I was started in the 70s and the 70s we focused on minerals and clay and fertility and all the issues associated with mineral fertility and then the 80s we focused on organic matter and then from the 2000s we started to focus heavily on biology and now we start to talk about let's look at the system and have what's the definition of a good system so there are things you can do that look at fungi and I'm still actually researching this a little bit with RMIT to get it sorted out but I'm quite happy to say it now because you can start with the basic aggregate test and the aggregate tests will a soil will disperse or slake um particularly where where the the TMI is located um where you're on a fairly mineral electrical based soil that's prone to doing that and it does that within a minute couple of minutes if it hasn't done it after about 10 or 15 minutes it pushes air out and most people stop the test then where you might get a bit of slaking but if the cloud is still holding its form and you wait another hour and it starts to slowly slake then you have labile carbon but you don't have um uh glomulant and glomulant is the release from fungi so you have the first stage you're building your organic matter up so you've got you've got a bit of light glue so the labile phase holding the aggregate together against the repulsive forces that the chemistry wants to push it apart so then you go out another eight hours and in eight hours you will have a circumstance where you've got um aged glomulant um not active fungi and you might to get start some slaking occurring at that point to the test you add a little bit a tiny little bit of dam bottom sediments or river bottom sediments just a tiny bit and you put that into the glass jar when you start why do you do that? Well one way of breaking down glomulant which is quite resistant to acid and alkali is with anaerobic bacteria the anaerobic bacteria like glomulant they take roughly three days to break it down so you can leave this sitting in the shade in your office for three days and at the end of three days if the aggregate starts to really fall apart and break down you know that you've got glomulant on it if it doesn't break down you know you've got glomulant in it as well as on it and therefore you've got a very good system we haven't published this yet and we're trying to work out how to make it farmer friendly because how do you find reducing bacteria where you get it from the bottom of the dam how do you find a small bit that doesn't make it cloudy how do you know it's going to grow and digest the glomulant is all variables but that's the way that you can look at a system production with a simple test I mean there are other things there's the underpants test which you put out for about four months and see the rate at which the underpants degrade and that will tell you if the system is got fungi so how do you know that because fungi have to work with bacteria to break down hemicellulose and lignin so if your fungi is not not active you will get mineralization quite quickly of hemicellulose but the breakdown of lignin is very hard without the presence of fungi so any grass that you know stronger grass does a little bit of lignin in it but mostly tree does and that's the whole basis for time by dynamic solution 500 is you actually need fungi and bacteria to work together to break you down so there are tests you can do the systems tests at this stage we haven't quite worked out how to provide a systems evaluation for soil apart from smell look and feel and how much you push it a star picket or a simple right into the ground is actually an excellent test all right thanks Phil that was a very short answer to that question it was a long thanks for keeping it so concise for further details on the underpants test just contact Phil directly it's well known it's called the soil your undies yes it won an award at the landcare of awards last year oh it did yeah yeah it's been in publication for about 15 years it is actually quite well done okay I apologize all right next question Oldfield will Luke's presentation be available yes you can log into our website we typically put a recording of these up on the Monday following the webinar so if you log in Monday afternoon to our website there's recordings of all the webinars that I've done over the years there um Ian Rutherford great results really interesting were there any controls for the field assessments please therefore comparable sites that were not treated yes thanks Ian good to see you made it and could make it today look the short answer again is and it is covered in our published paper there that we just simply couldn't afford the time and resources to do a fully paired study and and so what we're using is more of a state and transition models approach of comparing the observed versus the expected model response so no we don't have paired sites it was you might have noted that with the University of Canberra's fish surveys Mark Lintermans and his team decided that they did want to do some comparison with similar so with fish you can sort of get away with that in similar comparable montane creek waterways of a similar catchment size but when we're talking about soils river geomorphology and other topographic and geomorphological aspects yeah pretty hard to find I mean we did I mean we looked at it as real possibilities and to have something in a nearby area in a comparable climate as well yeah just it just wasn't possible or viable I suppose that's where the um the advisory committee the technical advisory committee really ultimately settled on that sort of statement transition that's right way of measuring the benefits yes all right next question and we've got 15 to go I think we'll give it 15 more minutes so that's um I'll take us to half past two is that all right Luke if we keep going I can I can hold yeah yeah thanks mate okay uh Paul Webb love slide 45 in brief process concept diagrams not sure what slide 45 45 well that's to do with the Justin Borovitz group of slides with let's say the opportunities and applications of that land use and land management and that also tapped into much of what Phil's talked about as well going right down to the soil health aspects yeah okay so next one from Paul Webb some great rehydration work also happening in northwest New South Wales and southwest Queensland less monitoring and press coverage but some really serious hectare areas showing remarkable organic recovery well that's great to hear um look there are some great practitioners and examples at scale like we're not talk the you know when I talk about some these these are actual production scale farms what Phil talked about were production scale farms these these aren't just you know hobby farms by any stretch yeah and I think that's what makes it so special yeah but you can do it even at the hobby farm scale it is all scalable but if we don't change that scale we're not really going to reverse well ultimately even at the small you you know you can have a small property but if cumulatively at a catchment scale you you will get that a more extended larger consistent benefit yeah I think we're saying the same thing um someone's chasing news on peter andrews do you oh he's I'm in here and steward is still conducting their their workshops and training programs across Australia and I'm sure look up their website um we'll chase them down yeah so there's yeah let me google that for you that's all right look we're we're short for time but uh have a look peter andrews is still operating and certainly absolutely the location got the dmi up and going all right george mcdonald given the need to go to scale do you think a for profit delivery advisory model such as the malone institute promotes is the optimum framework for addressing the existential issue of water in the landscape in real time across the myriad of catchments and communities and hydrological geographical context it rather than a bottom-up holistic community-driven approach which educates generally and specifically and gives stakeholders with the technology and resources they need to address the issue in their own environment that really I mean that's a chewy question but you know it's exactly in fact I look at it that that's exactly what TMI has been doing we work at the grassroots level but we also work with all levels of government and and you know apolitical in many cases because we've already seen changes in federal and state level governments that we operate with and uh you know that it's it's really about gaining that bipartisan interest at that top level but also the local level whether it's your local catchment management authority or the local land services your local council you know just whatever those other local groups because you know what that and the local land holders in that catchment are going to be the ones that are truly passionate about their patch and that those other levels of government are there to you know provide you know provide either the the resourcing that that spreads out to those regions or at that higher level sets the goals and aspirations and the strategic solve what it means in terms of where where assistance is needed out to those states and regions but also the policies and regulatory that then feed down to the state level so it does need I mean we've talked about integrated systems approach but that also means that we also need to look at it from that it's multi-scale scale at the who's doing their bit and who's well they're all important they all they all carry a certain responsibility and need to be involved some of it's and and and you know the farmers can't do it on their own and they there needs to be a level of assistance and it goes back to what we were talking about in the terms of this investment isn't it better to be able to help land holders improve to get better outcomes from a production as well as from a environmental aspects as well as from building resilience to climate extremes because I know that most land holders I've worked with they're very proud of their patch they they certainly are proud of what they do and they certainly don't look to or expect handouts but sometimes a hand up a leg up to assist them and if that helps by investing let's say for every dollar that you would invest in that aspect of helping people progress and move to a better systems approach you possibly are in the realm of increasing their the savings of what would be costs to bail people out from fire flood and drought you'd probably get a tenfold return on that just at the top of my hat but some of the examples that Phil put forward back in the presentation I think we're quite relevant and trying to get an idea of what that cost benefit is so I think it really is about all levels but intrinsically it does need to be driven at the at that ground grassroots level but it still needs to be that government is there to assist not get in the way but also provide the resources that are going to help this transition yeah I think it's a really important question and look I think that TMI is a great example of creating a sustainable organisation so well and we can't do it on our own Richard which is why we partner with so many other groups yeah exactly even those groups like yourself or David Hardwick whose soils Phil and his groups you know there's there's so many others whether it's Sybo labs as a tool or my grazing as well as another tool there's so many components and we certainly can't do it all we specialise in what we do well and we draw in those other relevant subject matter experts depending on what location we're in and what we deem is what the what needs to be brought in I guess the the reality is that at scale this is a massive infrastructure project right and I guess going to the the number the question of you know what's the actual model that's most likely to deliver a really massive infrastructure process for you know the whole of Australia well it's going to certainly add a lot of government funding isn't it to achieve that scale and it's going to need some well it's going to need more than a system for hydration initiative it needs to be a national rehydration initiative and and it does need to draw on all those scalable local community representatives to want to be involved and to be a resource to to to drive it forward yeah all right but certainly a very important point because I think it's at the point where the proof is there that there's a lot of benefits and we do need to scale it and it's a challenge for all of us to work out the best way to scale it next question thanks for the presentation how is the increased quantity of water in the landscape measured is it summed as the volume held in dams waterways and wetlands does it include volumes held in soil I could answer this one you certainly can so really it's the water balance elements that are measured and that certainly does include the the amount of water that's stored in those dams based on the water elevation within the ponds upstream of them it does include aquifer storage which is based on the standing water levels that we have in those monitoring wells and an estimate of the aquifer thickness and in terms of the soil moisture that's our way of measuring how much is stored within the soil volume and we interpret that from capacitance probes there's a bit of a deficiency at the moment because we need to really do a calibration of that against the specific soils on the site so there's a project to do that but right now we have a lot of data on the distribution of the moisture in the profiles and certainly the objective is to ultimately have a quantitative water balance for the whole site there's also two climate stations which give us rainfall data at each of the main farms which goes into that water balance as well so yeah a lot of data at six strain gauges to measure the surface water in the waterways correct a lot of infrastructure there and we're working towards having that all available for research communities in the future to use and it's certainly a big part of the MRI project is to have really good long-term research available data next question from Giuseppe Greco from Zoos Victoria G'day Giuseppe Hi Luke and Richard great presentation I've got a question regarding the satellite data versus field data how can you validate that that's quite a big question it is a big question and you know I'd like to say that I've done a lot of work in this in fact you know as one of the first to implement at scale you know the time series or temporal multi temporal spatial analysis and coupling that with ground data and you're very right look you anything that's measured remotely whether it's even by you know a drone or the satellite data that we've all come to love and know that it does require some level of ground calibration and validation whether it's from a cover level point of view or from a biomass point of view or even just trying to you know quantify tree and shrub cover but I can assure you that in many cases and the very clever people that Phil Tickle and Peter Scarf have got at Cybo Labs that they're using a lot of very clever machine learning and AI and you input into that also let's call it training data from actual ground-based sites to help inform that AI and machine learning to get a better more accurate estimate but yes you do need some level of ground truthing and validation and there's no doubt about it and it does need to be done in different regions because of course there's going to be different responses from the tropical north to the temperate south and and even the arid lands of you know that but you know and that work has been has been rolling out and if you you know I'm sure that Phil would be happy to engage that if you had other areas that you felt that you needed to tighten up on that validation that there are ways such as we've been doing using a plate meter and collecting biomass samples and feed that data back into the calibration equation for that local specific area so that you can get more accurate results or thanks Luke so Mike Jorgensen there was a recent ABC article for others that was the landline and I think it would still be on ABC if you'd like to watch that it was very informative noting that regulatory impediments is slowing implementation of regenerative works yes can you comment on what your group is doing to smooth implementation right well and I think that that thanks for that question because landline I think that really epitomized and would probably supplement my answer but in summary the Malone law committee led by Matt Edgerton-Burton and Jerry Bates have done a fantastic work you know a huge amount of work with Peter Hazel and others from TMI to get this led you know put an alternative legislation in front of the parliament of New South Wales and have continued to push and we have had that approval happen earlier this year and and it's it's a huge win because yes it has been a regulatory burden that costs and I look I know I said on the program tens of thousands but the reality is that it can easily cost hundreds of thousands in terms of time cost effort staff etc to do all of that work just to be able to do it so that is somewhat a relief and yet that's not an open slather there's still a controlled activity control activity approval process that still needs to be done by the regulator it's just that it's not an automated or wasn't it's now not an expectation that we had to also include all these other things because it would trigger a development approval so now the with that under our arm and as an example we have put forward that we'd like to look at it from a federal level so again working at all levels of government because this is a good example of that rather being treated as developers we're actually regenerators more broadly and I think that you know that as as we learn and mature in how we approach these things as much as you know what we can do is that we can actually have the propensity to change legislation to realise that there are benefits in doing this and how and what are those blockages and some of those blockages is just the fact that there's conflicting between different regulations and policies so it's about also streamlining that and I'm sure that everyone agrees that bureaucracy and red tape it's there for a purpose but it does need to be streamlined this was one of those examples and I think that we'd love to be able to work with but both the federal government on this and set a bit of a standard that would also influence and into the other states and territories that we work in. All right thanks Luke we've got six questions left and we've got zero minutes left I'm just going to I think do two more questions so apologies to those who've missed out I think we need to wind it up a couple of questions for Luke from Dan Evans can we tie the benefits of this improved landscape functioning to a natural capital framework underpinned by the undoubted economic benefits provided which we all appreciate is an important driver in future funding and then secondly have you considered using EDNA to support aquatic ecological community benefits of this program of works? Yes so I'll start with the second question yes we have considered it but we sort of already started the process of this type of methodology and with the funding allocated this new technology has come to the fore and has really matured also and I would certainly welcome the opportunity to be able to supplement that into our current monitoring and and look at continually it on. The first question and I'm now thinking I'm going to probably forget all the details of that first question just quickly keywords out of that first part Richard. So it's really that natural capital framework. Ah yes good question so we have been working with people from the accounting for nature group and hats off to them as well again and I think that there are these processes of accounting for nature that they have been developing and that even includes what Phil's group's doing in terms of accounting for carbon and so we've been in talks also with accounting for nature to look at how we could account for the water in the system as well as as a way of how that can be a feasible way of not only accounting for it that also then leads to as we're doing for accounting for nature whether that accounting for nature are doing of how do you put a dollar value on certain birds or or or flora for and more importantly even when you combine that the community value out of that and so water also being I mean we we can price water out of the tab but water in the system and all those things that we've covered today is a major driver and so we are looking at that and we would love to be able to develop a similar accounting process for water or having landscape rehydration. Yes all right thanks Luke next question do you assess potential secondary salinization the answer to that is certainly forms part of the risk framework and and really does need to be assessed at the time of planning this you know you you are playing with the water balance you are in some instances leading to shallow water totals and a lot of us would be aware that that increases the risk of salinity so there is the need to plan around that that's for sure. Next question from Simon Winfield are you saying there is no data on flood flow no there's plenty of data we've got those gauging stations that Luke mentioned so plenty of hydrograph data for that are there any side busside catchment measurements not really. Keith Walker has more interest from landholders is building towards rehydration what are your thoughts on getting some regulatory reduction in constraints to enable landholders to actively implement rehydration across catchments I think that's pretty well covered in that land. I'll just I'll just add to that Richard so the landline one really did deal with the in-stream works and where the regulatory areas are particularly in waterways but the other component is I've got to remind people that that landscape rehydration starts from the ridgeline down to there so there's plenty that landholders you know come and come and do the training courses that TAM and others have developed and are rolling out now currently right at this very point in time across Australia inquire about those when it's coming to your region or would you like one to come there but really there is so much that you can learn that you can actually do yourself it's almost like that classic statement of if we can teach you how to harvest water and manage water in your own landscape then there are actions that you can do and undertake yourself outside of that regulatory areas. Alright thanks Luke well I think we are going to have to call it a day but many thanks to everybody who has participated in the webinar today for those questions we haven't got to today we'll pass them on to Luke and he will send you an email or we will send you an email answering those questions but many thanks to everyone for participating in today's webinar and a really big thank you to both Luke and Phil for being involved in the panel as well so many thanks and all the best thank you Phil thank you Richard thanks very much Luke was fantastic and thank you Richard for the forum yeah thank you thanks everybody all right