基于生态需水保障的农业用水安全评价——以山东省引黄灌区为例

保障农业用水安全和生态安全是流域水资源管理的重点,针对黄河口和山东引黄灌区的用水矛盾,采用阈值分析与地统计学方法,考虑作物蒸散发和有效降雨计算山东省引黄灌区灌溉需水量,在优先保障黄河口不同等级生态需水条件下分析灌区（划分为不同调控区）可用水量的响应特征,以地理信息系统（GIS）为平台计算具有时空差异的山东省引黄灌区农业用水安全压力指数,进而评价多时空尺度下的山东省引黄灌区农业用水安全。结果表明,在平水年,保障适宜等级的生态需水后大概有33%的年份农业用水安全存在压力,保障最低等级的生态需水约有27%的农业用水面临短缺,但是大部分情况下农业用水安全压力指数都在30%之下,然而保障最高等级生态需水后,有50%以上的年份存在农业用水安全压力,这种压力无论是从出现频次还是在指数强度上都有明显增加。在空间尺度上,以打渔张、刘春家、麻湾和簸箕李等灌区为代表的调控区2、11、13、14和17的农业用水压力显著,代表年内保障最低等级的生态需水后调控区的农业用水安全压力指数超过了20%,保障适宜等级的生态需水后,大部分调控区的农业用水安全压力指数超过了20%,调控区2和13的压力指数超过了30%,保障最高等级的生态需水后大部分调控区的农业用水安全压力指数超过了60%。在引黄水量调配过程中,应该按照水文年的不同保障合理的生态水量,同时充分考虑水文气象因子的空间差异性,在不同调控区细化分配方案,平水年份保障适宜等级生态需水后农业用水短缺由55.28降低到18.25亿m³。该评价方法反映了优先保障生态需水后灌区农业水资源保障情况,并能有效降低农业和生态用水之间的矛盾,为管理部门进行"精细配水"提供依据。     

Land cover change and water vapour flows: learning from Australia

Australia is faced with large-scale dryland salinization problems, largely as a consequence of the clearing of native vegetation for cropland and grassland. We estimate the change in continental water vapour flow (evapotranspiration) of Australia during the past 200 years. During this period there has been a substantial decrease in woody vegetation and a corresponding increase in croplands and grasslands. The shift in land use has caused a ca. 10% decrease in water vapour flows from the continent. This reduction corresponds to an annual freshwater flow of almost 340 km(3). The society-induced alteration of freshwater flows is estimated at more than 15 times the volume of run-off freshwater that is diverted and actively managed in the Australian society. These substantial water vapour flow alterations were previously not addressed in water management but are now causing serious impacts on the Australian society and local economies. Global and continental freshwater assessments and policy often neglects the interplay between freshwater flows and landscape dynamics. Freshwater issues on both regional and global levels must be rethought and the interplay between terrestrial ecosystems and freshwater better incorporated in freshwater and ecosystem management.     

基于生态需水保障的农业生态补偿标准

面向流域农业需水和生态需水间的矛盾问题和协调发展的要求,提出了基于生态需水保障的农业生态补偿标准计算方法。其中考虑农业用水定额计算基于生态需水保障的农业用水短缺,引入水分生产函数模型建立保障生态需水量产生的农业用水短缺与产量损失间的关系,根据不同季节作物产量响应系数的变化,定量确定具有时间和等级差异性的农业生态补偿标准。以保障黄河口生态需水引起的山东引黄灌区农业损失补偿标准分析为实例,计算了冬小麦和夏玉米种植户不同等级的生态补偿标准。结论认为,农业生态补偿标准需根据不同的来水过程及生态需水等级确定,面积稳定和保障功能显著的粮食作物应作为补偿标准计算的依据。     

Test of an environmental flow release in a British Columbia river: does more water mean more fish?

1. Water managers must make difficult decisions about the allocation of streamflows between out‐of‐channel human uses and environmental flows for aquatic resources. However, the effects environmental flows on stream ecosystems are infrequently evaluated. 2. We used a 13‐year experiment in the regulated Bridge River, British Columbia, Canada, to determine whether an environmental flow release designed to increase salmonid productivity was successful. A hierarchical Bayesian model was used to compare juvenile Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) abundance before and after the flow release. 3. We found that the total number of salmonids did increase after the release, but most of the gains could be attributed to the rewatering of a previously dry channel located immediately below the dam. In reaches that had flowing water during the baseline period, the response of individual salmon species to the increase in flow was variable, and there was little change in total abundance after the flow release. Our results were inconsistent with both habitat modelling, which predicted a decrease in habitat quality with increasing flow, and holistic instream flow approaches, which imply greater benefits with larger flows. 4. We question whether biotic responses to flow changes can be predicted reliably with currently available methods and suggest that adaptive management or the use of decision tools that account for the uncertainty in the biotic response is required for instream flow decisions when the competing demands for water are great.     

Droughts and anti-droughts: the low flow hydrology of Australian rivers

1. Droughts are not easily defined other than by culturally driven judgements about the extent and nature of impact. Natural ecosystems are adapted to the magnitude and frequency of dry periods and these are instrumental in controlling the long term functioning of these systems. 2. In unregulated rivers, low flows are derived from water in long‐term storage in the catchment, commonly as shallow groundwater. Four types of low flow sequences are evident for representative rivers from each of the seven flow regime zones in Australia and an arid zone stream: perennial streams with low annual flow variability that have seasonal low flows but do not cease to flow; perennial streams with high annual variability that cease to flow in extreme years; ephemeral streams that regularly cease to flow in the dry season; and arid zone streams with long and erratic periods of no flow. 3. Although Australian rivers record runs of consecutive years of low flows longer than would be expected theoretically, the departures from the expected are not statistically significant. Trends and quasi‐cycles in sequences of low‐flow years are observed over decadal time scales. 4. Examples of the effects of river regulation on low flows in southern Australia indicate that, while in detail the impacts of regulation vary, in general regulation mitigates the severity of low flows. 5. It is our contention that the indigenous biota of Australian rivers are adapted to the naturally occurring low flow conditions and that, while there is considerable scientific interest in the effects of climate change on stream ecology, such studies have little practical relevance for the management of indigenous biota in unregulated rivers. 6. The changes brought about by the regulation of rivers are much more rapid and dramatic than those which might occur as a result of climate change and it is possible to develop management procedures to mitigate them. In regulated rivers, the real problem may be ‘anti‐droughts’– the removal of significant natural low‐flow events from the flow pattern.     

Predators and the public trust

Many democratic governments recognize a duty to conserve environmental resources, including wild animals, as a public trust for current and future citizens. These public trust principles have informed two centuries of U.S.A. Supreme Court decisions and environmental laws worldwide. Nevertheless numerous populations of large‐bodied, mammalian carnivores (predators) were eradicated in the 20th century. Environmental movements and strict legal protections have fostered predator recoveries across the U.S.A. and Europe since the 1970s. Now subnational jurisdictions are regaining management authority from central governments for their predator subpopulations. Will the history of local eradication repeat or will these jurisdictions adopt public trust thinking and their obligation to broad public interests over narrower ones? We review the role of public trust principles in the restoration and preservation of controversial species. In so doing we argue for the essential roles of scientists from many disciplines concerned with biological diversity and its conservation. We look beyond species endangerment to future generations' interests in sustainability, particularly non‐consumptive uses. Although our conclusions apply to all wild organisms, we focus on predators because of the particular challenges they pose for government trustees, trust managers, and society. Gray wolves Canis lupus L. deserve particular attention, because detailed information and abundant policy debates across regions have exposed four important challenges for preserving predators in the face of interest group hostility. One challenge is uncertainty and varied interpretations about public trustees' responsibilities for wildlife, which have created a mosaic of policies across jurisdictions. We explore how such mosaics have merits and drawbacks for biodiversity. The other three challenges to conserving wildlife as public trust assets are illuminated by the biology of predators and the interacting behavioural ecologies of humans and predators. The scientific community has not reached consensus on sustainable levels of human‐caused mortality for many predator populations. This challenge includes both genuine conceptual uncertainty and exploitation of scientific debate for political gain. Second, human intolerance for predators exposes value conflicts about preferences for some wildlife over others and balancing majority rule with the protection of minorities in a democracy. We examine how differences between traditional assumptions and scientific studies of interactions between people and predators impede evidence‐based policy. Even if the prior challenges can be overcome, well‐reasoned policy on wild animals faces a greater challenge than other environmental assets because animals and humans change behaviour in response to each other in the short term. These coupled, dynamic responses exacerbate clashes between uses that deplete wildlife and uses that enhance or preserve wildlife. Viewed in this way, environmental assets demand sophisticated, careful accounting by disinterested trustees who can both understand the multidisciplinary scientific measurements of relative costs and benefits among competing uses, and justly balance the needs of all beneficiaries including future generations. Without public trust principles, future trustees will seldom prevail against narrow, powerful, and undemocratic interests. Without conservation informed by public trust thinking predator populations will face repeated cycles of eradication and recovery. Our conclusions have implications for the many subfields of the biological sciences that address environmental trust assets from the atmosphere to aquifers.     

Wicked Water: Engaging with Communities in Complex Conversations about Water Recycling

Water security is at the forefront of public attention in Australia. One response to Australia’s current water situation is water recycling; however, community responses to recycling have been contentious. Examining reactions to recycling reveals that debates are underpinned by competing discourses about water, giving rise to different ways of talking, writing, making meaning, and responding to issues of water security. In 2007 a local government in Australia considered a proposal to augment domestic water storages with highly treated wastewater. This was referred to as the “Water2WATER” project. A 3-month community consultation was conducted, including health and environmental assessments. Despite apparently favorable recommendations, the proposal was not considered suitable as an immediate response to securing the region’s water supply. The consultation revealed a host of competing environmental, scientific, and cultural discourses emerging from community, government, and industry responses. Introducing an ecosystem approach to engaging communities about water recycling may provide new ways of assisting communities come to terms with the challenges concerned with water security in the future.     

Edible insects: Traditional knowledge or western phobia?

With an increasing human population and environmental degradation, the world faces a major problem in providing adequate animal based proteins. Many traditional societies have used or still use insects as a protein source, while westernized societies are reluctant to use insects, despite being the major consumers of animal proteins. We now need to consider insects as a source of food for humans in a manner that acknowledges both the role of entomophagy in indigenous societies and the need for westernized societies to reduce the size of their environmental footprint with regard to food production. The situation on continents such as Africa, Asia, and Central and South America has some parallels to Australia in that there are two forces in operation: the sustainable traditional use of edible insects and the "westernization" of these societies leading to a movement away from entomophagy. However, the potential to reach a compromise is greater in these continents because entomophagy is already accepted. The major challenges will be establishing sustainable production systems that include food safety and security as well as environmental protection. Whether this will happen or not will depend upon: (i) a major change in attitude in westernized societies towards entomophagy; (ii) pressure to conserve remaining habitats in a sustainable manner; (iii) economic impetus to develop food production systems that include insects; and (iv) an acknowledgement that achieving adequate nutrition on a global basis will involve different diets in much of the developed world.     

Effects of Nutrient Level on Maternal Choice and Siring Success in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Cucumis sativus</Emphasis> (Cucurbitaceae)

Plants have evolved many mechanisms to increase the chance of gene dispersal mainly through pollen and environmental factors play an important role. Understanding the mechanism behind gene dispersal is therefore crucial in the correct evaluation of the use of genetically modified crops for cultivation. In this paper we address the question of weather nutrient availability for the female affects the outcome of pollen competition between two pollen donor cultivars of Cucumis sativus. We do this by carrying out controlled crosses of female plants grown at three different nutrient levels. We separated the effect of a specific donor from the effect of pollen tube growth rate by using reversed crosses of fast and slow pollen. Our results show that female effects on siring ability vary with nutrient level. Pollen with a high pollen tube growth rate was more successful when nutrient availability for the female was high. This could be the result of selection on the female to adjust preference according to environmental circumstances. Pollen tube growth rate was measured under nutrient rich circumstances, thus high performers possessed traits adapted to a nutrient rich situation. Due to trade-off effects, these traits might not be advantageous in poor environments. Instead, individuals adapted to low nutrient circumstances will have a higher pollen tube growth rate. If siring ability varies with the environment of the recipient plant, this means that assessments of gene flow must account for this variation and include both pollen donors and recipient plants subjected to a range of environmental circumstances. In risk assessments of transgenic plants, plants are often kept under experimental, homogenous conditions. If our results also apply to other species, estimates of gene flow under constant conditions may be misleading. Selection on siring ability and female preference have fundamental effects on gene flow and need to be considered in risk assessments of transgenic plants.Co-ordinating editor: I. Olivieri     

What's on the horizon for macroecology?

Over the last two decades, macroecology – the analysis of large‐scale, multi‐species ecological patterns and processes – has established itself as a major line of biological research. Analyses of statistical links between environmental variables and biotic responses have long and successfully been employed as a main approach, but new developments are due to be utilized. Scanning the horizon of macroecology, we identified four challenges that will probably play a major role in the future. We support our claims by examples and bibliographic analyses. 1) Integrating the past into macroecological analyses, e.g. by using paleontological or phylogenetic information or by applying methods from historical biogeography, will sharpen our understanding of the underlying reasons for contemporary patterns. 2) Explicit consideration of the local processes that lead to the observed larger‐scale patterns is necessary to understand the fine‐grain variability found in nature, and will enable better prediction of future patterns (e.g. under environmental change conditions). 3) Macroecology is dependent on large‐scale, high quality data from a broad spectrum of taxa and regions. More available data sources need to be tapped and new, small‐grain large‐extent data need to be collected. 4) Although macroecology already lead to mainstreaming cutting‐edge statistical analysis techniques, we find that more sophisticated methods are needed to account for the biases inherent to sampling at large scale. Bayesian methods may be particularly suitable to address these challenges. To continue the vigorous development of the macroecological research agenda, it is time to address these challenges and to avoid becoming too complacent with current achievements.     

The big ecological questions inhibiting effective environmental management in Australia

The need to improve environmental management in Australia is urgent because human health, well‐being and social stability all depend ultimately on maintenance of life‐supporting ecological processes. Ecological science can inform this effort, but when issues are socially and economically complex the inclination is to wait for science to provide answers before acting. Increasingly, managers and policy‐makers will be called on to use the present state of scientific knowledge to supply reasonable inferences for action based on imperfect knowledge. Hence, one challenge is to use existing ecological knowledge more effectively; a second is to tackle the critical unanswered ecological questions. This paper identifies areas of environmental management that are profoundly hindered by an inability of science to answer basic questions, in contrast to those areas where knowledge is not the major barrier to policy development and management. Of the 22 big questions identified herein, more than half are directly related to climate change. Several of the questions concern our limited understanding of the dynamics of marine systems. There is enough information already available to develop effective policy and management to address several significant ecological issues. We urge ecologists to make better use of existing knowledge in dialogue with policy‐makers and land managers. Because the challenges are enormous, ecologists will increasingly be engaging a wide range of other disciplines to help identify pathways towards a sustainable future.     

Causes and consequences of long-term climatic variability on the Australian continent

Summary 1. Ice-volume forced glacial–interglacial cyclicity is the major cause of global climate variation within the late Quaternary period. Within the Australian region, this variation is expressed predominantly as oscillations in moisture availability. Glacial periods were substantially drier than today with restricted distribution of mesic plant communities, shallow or ephemeral water bodies and extensive aeolian dune activity.
2. Superimposed on this cyclicity in Australia is a trend towards drier and/or more variable climates within the last 350 000 years. This trend may have been initiated by changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation resulting from Australia's continued movement into the Southeast Asian region and involving the onset or intensification of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation system and a reduction in summer monsoon activity.
3. Increased biomass burning, stemming originally from increased climatic variability and later enhanced by activities of indigenous people, resulted in a more open and sclerophyllous vegetation, increased salinity and a further reduction in water availability.
4. Past records combined with recent observations suggest that the degree of environmental variability will increase and the drying trend will be enhanced in the foreseeable future, regardless of the extent or nature of human intervention.     

A Rosetta Stone for Nature’s Benefits to People

After a long incubation period, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is now underway. Underpinning all its activities is the IPBES Conceptual Framework (CF), a simplified model of the interactions between nature and people. Drawing on the legacy of previous large-scale environmental assessments, the CF goes further in explicitly embracing different disciplines and knowledge systems (including indigenous and local knowledge) in the co-construction of assessments of the state of the world’s biodiversity and the benefits it provides to humans. The CF can be thought of as a kind of “Rosetta Stone” that highlights commonalities between diverse value sets and seeks to facilitate crossdisciplinary and crosscultural understanding. We argue that the CF will contribute to the increasing trend towards interdisciplinarity in understanding and managing the environment. Rather than displacing disciplinary science, however, we believe that the CF will provide new contexts of discovery and policy applications for it.     

Is a cooperative approach to seaweed farming effectual? An analysis of the seaweed cluster project (SCP), Malaysia

Seaweed (Kappaphycus spp.) farming has been practised in Malaysia since the late 1970s following government policy incentives (training and farming inputs). However, numerous governance, economic, environmental, technological and sociocultural challenges have limited the industry from achieving its full potential. The Seaweed Cluster Project (SCP) was introduced in 2012 to address some of these challenges. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the SCP in delivering its central objectives of increasing seaweed production, optimising the farming area, improving seaweed quality and farming efficiency, raising farmers’ income, and reducing the environmental impact of seaweed farming. Community and industry perceptions of the SCP were obtained from seven communities using a mixed-methods approach based on face-to-face semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, household surveys, observation and secondary data. Views on the SCP outcomes were generally negative, including low take-up rates by indigenous people, poor stakeholder participation in decision-making, limited acceptance of new technologies, economic vulnerability, a complex marketing system, and low social cohesion of seaweed farming communities. Positive perceptions included recognition that the SCP confers high social status upon a community, reduces operating costs, and facilitates the production of certified seaweed. The SCP’s problems are linked to poor multi-level governance, weak market mechanisms and unintegrated community development. The study concludes with five recommendations to improve the SCP: promote the participation of indigenous people; legalise existing migrant farmers; strengthen local seaweed cooperative organisations; provide entrepreneurship skills to farmers; and fully integrate stakeholders into decision-making.     

The Effects of an Environmental Flow Release on Water Quality in the Hyporheic Zone of the Hunter River,Australia

Environmental flow releases have been advocated as a useful rehabilitation strategy for improving river condition but assessments of their success have typically focused on surface water quality and biota. In this study, we investigated the impacts of an environmental flow release on water temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and nitrate concentrations in surface and subsurface (hyporheic) water at upwelling and downwelling zones in three sites along the Hunter River, New South Wales, Australia. We hypothesised that the flow pulse would ‘flush’ the sediments with oxygenated water, stimulating hyporheic microbial activity and nitrification, enhancing nitrate concentrations over time. Surface and subsurface samples were collected before, 7 days after, and 49 days after an environmental flow release of 5000 Ml for a period of 3 days. No lasting effects on dissolved oxygen or conductivity were evident at most sites although dissolved oxygen declined over time at the downwelling site at Bowmans Crossing. At the downwelling zones at all sites, hyporheic nitrate concentrations declined initially following the release, but then rose or leveled off by Day 49. This initial drop in concentration was attributed to flushing of nitrate from the sediments. At two sites, nitrate concentrations had increased by Day 49 in the upwelling zones while at the third site, it fell significantly, associated with very low dissolved oxygen and likely reductive loss of nitrate. Electrical conductivity data indicate that potential inputs of agriculturally enriched groundwater may contribute to the nitrogen dynamics of the Hunter River. This study highlights the spatial heterogeneity that occurs in the hyporheic zone within and among sites of a regulated river, and emphasises the need for multiple-site surveys and an understanding of groundwater dynamics to assess physicochemical responses of the hyporheic zone to environmental flow releases.     

A Database to Facilitate a Process‐Oriented Approach to Urban Metabolism

In view of urbanization trends coupled with climate‐change challenges, it is increasingly important to establish less‐harmful means of urban living. To date, urban metabolism (UM) studies have quantified the aggregate material and energy flows into and out of cities and, further, have identified how consumer activity causes these flows. However, little attention has been paid to the networks of conversion processes that link consumer end‐use demands to aggregate metabolic flows. Here, we conduct a systematic literature search to assemble a database of 202 urban energy, water, and waste management processes. We show how the database can help planners and policy makers choose the preferred process to meet a specific resource management need; identify synergies between energy, water, and waste management processes; and compute optimal networks of processes to meet an area's consumer demand at minimum environmental cost. We make our database publicly available under an open‐source license and discuss the possibilities for how it might be used alongside other industrial ecology data sets to enhance research opportunities. This will encourage more holistic UM analyses, which appreciate how both consumer activity and the engineered urban system work together to influence aggregate metabolic flows and thus support efforts to make cities more sustainable.     

Adopting Lead-Free Electronics: Policy Differences and Knowledge Gaps

For more than a decade, the use of lead (Pb) in electronics has been controversial: Indeed, its toxic effects are well documented, whereas relatively little is known about proposed alternative materials. As the quantity of electronic and electrical waste (e‐waste) increases, legislative initiatives and corporate marketing strategies are driving a reduction in the use of some toxic substances in electronics. This article argues that the primacy of legislation over engineering and economics may result in selecting undesirable replacement materials for Pb because of overlooked knowledge gaps. These gaps include the need for: assessments of the effects of changes in policy on the flow of e‐waste across state and national boundaries; further reliability testing of alternative solder alloys; further toxicology and environmental impact studies for high environmental loading of the alternative solders (and their metal components); improved risk assessment methodologies that can capture complexities such as changes in waste management practices, in electronic product design, and in rate of product obsolescence; carefully executed allocation methods when evaluating the impact of raw material extraction; and in‐depth risk assessment of alternative end‐of‐life (EOL) options. The resulting environmental and human health consequences may be exacerbated by policy differences across political boundaries. To address this conundrum, legislation and policies dealing with Pb in electronics are first reviewed. A discussion of the current state of knowledge on alternative solder materials relative to product design, environmental performance, and risk assessment follows. Previous studies are reviewed, and consistent with their results, this analysis finds that there is great uncertainty in the trade‐offs between Pb‐based solders and proposed replacements. Bridging policy and knowledge gaps will require increased international cooperation on materials use, product market coverage, and e‐waste EOL management.     

A Comprehensive Material Flow Account for Lao PDR to Inform Environmental and Sustainability Policy

Modern environmental and sustainability policy that acknowledges the linkages between socioeconomic processes and environmental pressures and impacts, and designs policies to decouple economic activity from environmental pressures and impacts, requires a sophisticated and comprehensive knowledge base. The concept of industrial metabolism provides a sound conceptual base, and material flow accounting—including primary material inputs and outflows of waste and emissions—provides a well‐accepted operationalization. Studies presenting a comprehensive material flow account for a national economy are rare, especially for developing countries. Countries such as Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR or Laos) face dual objectives of improving the material standard of living of their people while managing natural resources sustainably and mitigating adverse environmental impacts from growing resource throughput. Our research fills a knowledge gap, presents a comprehensive account of material inputs and outflows of waste and emissions for the Lao PDR national economy, and applies the accounting approach for a low‐income economy in Asia. We present a material balance for the years 2000 and 2015. For this research, we used data from Lao PDR national statistics and the accounting guidelines of the European Statistical Office (Eurostat), which pioneered the use of material flow data as part of its official statistical reporting. We demonstrate the feasibility of the accounting approach and discuss the robustness of results using uncertainty analysis conducted with statistical approaches commonly used in the field of industrial ecology, including Gauss's law of error propagation and Monte Carlo simulation. We find that the fast‐changing scale and composition of Lao PDR material flows, waste, and emissions presents challenges to the existing policy capacity and will require investment into governance of changed patterns of material use, waste disposal, and emissions. We consider the data analysis sufficiently robust to inform such a change in policy direction.     

Ecological monitoring to support Water Sharing Plan evaluation and protect wetlands of inland New South Wales,Australia

Government‐funded flow response monitoring and modelling programmes (flow science) provided by the New South Wales Office of Water (NOW) have supported water resource management since 1997. Flow science has a core technical component defined by hypothesis‐driven long‐term monitoring and analysis, but it also represents many activities that support committees involved in environmental flow management. This is done through collaborations and contracting and has fostered considerable research and analysis into flow ecology, including modelling for the recent Murray–Darling Basin Plan. We describe the performance of environmental flows against legislated wetland objectives to improve wetland function and diversity using flow science. On‐ground monitoring at wetland sites has largely ceased but the flow science done so far indicates that the environmental flow rules written into Water Sharing Plans improve wetland diversity and function. Determination of the long‐term flow needs of NSW wetlands, including how well current Water Sharing Plans aid the delivery of environmental flows, requires finding the means to build on current flow science knowledge from across Australia.