| Abstract: | There is much in the scientific literature dealing with methods to determine environmental water requirements in streams. However, most of these methods are suited to long‐term water resource planning and setting regulatory targets. In Australia, the environment is now recognized as a legitimate user of water with its own water entitlement. With this in mind, and in the context of a water market, transparent decisions need to be made as to how best to utilize environmental water reserves on yearly, monthly or even daily basis. Environmental water managers must identify priority flow components and environmental assets. This will call for information on environmental water requirements to be presented in a manner that informs operational decisions. This paper proposes that describing environmental requirements as a function relating to different flow levels, a relationship named here as an environmental response curve, is an important first step in making transparent decisions to achieve the best outcome from limited environmental entitlements. The environmental response curves allow the marginal benefit of water (or value of each additional ML) to the environment to be understood. This allows environmental recommendations to be more readily translated into operational rules. This is not a new environmental flows methodology. The contribution of this paper is representing existing data to allow operational decisions. This paper provides a possible way forward in representing environmental demands for operation of environmental water and highlights areas where our current knowledge falls short. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
