The Goolwa Barrage, South Australia. River water to the left, ocean to the right, staring down the Barrage towards houses on the land.

The Goolwa barrage, South Australia.

The future of the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth (CLLAMM)

This project in the CLLAMMecology Research Cluster, CLLAMMecology Futures, evaluated the longer-term status of the region under different potential climate and management scenarios as developed in consultation with stakeholders.

  • 14 January 2008 | Updated 31 July 2012

Introducing the project

CLLAMM Futures relied on the ecological information provided by other projects in the CLLAMMecology Research Cluster.

Under the direction of Professor Peter G Fairweather of Flinders University of South Australia, CLLAMM Futures identified alternate ecosystem states that could occur in the Coorong region under different conditions - such as high salinity, low environmental flows as opposed to fresher and wetter conditions.

The work used a combination of statistical and analytical modelling approaches and interactively exploring combinations of managerial actions to seek the bounds of sensitivity for each state.

Deliverables

The project delivered:

  • the series of workshops, and corresponding reports,
  • parameterised versions of at least seven conceptual models currently being used by regional management agencies
  • series of alternative state scenarios in the form of state-and-transition models, exploring their likelihoods, and the consequences of them in ecological terms
  • modelled assessments of the ecological outcomes and desirability from a range of management actions involving flows and other levers in the CLLAMM region
  • protocols for indicator sets for determining the future ecological health of the CLLAMM region

Read a summary of the findings of CLLAMMecology: A whole-of-system approach to plan management. intervention in the Coorong