 Everybody today for the latest in our Hydrotera webinar series, it's great to have so many attendees. It's fantastic, in fact. Today, the topic we're looking at is rehydrating Australia's landscape, the productivity and environmental benefits. Next slide, things, Michelle. So our presenter today is Luke Peale from the Maloon Institute. Maloon Institute has a research farm or a few farms actually up out of Canberra. Luke will talk more to that. We've, Hydrotera has been heavily involved with the Maloon Institute over the last three years, designing their monitoring system and working with them about looking at indicators of catchment health and a whole range of things around designing and monitoring system specification and that sort of thing as well. And it's been a real pleasure to work with them. We really believe in the Maloon Institute's aims and their passion for rehabilitating Australia's landscape. And we have signed an MOU with them to collaborate on helping to spread the word about their practices and work closely with them, culminating in this webinar, for example. So behind the scenes, we've got Michelle keeping us on track today. And I'm Richard Gamble, Managing Director of Hydrotera. So next slide, thank you. So what are we going to talk about today? Well, I'll do a little bit of an introduction about how you can interact with this webinar. Then we pass over to Luke, who's going to talk about the Maloon Rehydration Initiative, which is their large research site out of Canberra. The various research themes that they're looking at, some of the preliminary findings from the research that they've already done, also looking at some of the fantastic outcomes that they've already witnessed in terms of biodiversity. And then also looking at the somewhat daunting aspect of the challenges we face as a nation in terms of preserving our native species and increasing the productivity of our land. Next slide. Thank you. Okay, so a really important part of these webinars is questions from yourselves. Our speakers really love to get your questions. And in order for you to make a question, you click on the Q&A button on your screen and type in there. At the end of the session, I will read out those questions. And Luke and myself will hopefully be able to answer those for you. So looking forward to getting some questions as well. Next slide, please. So Luke and myself have been working together now for quite a long time. I've been really impressed with the breadth of his knowledge in terms of natural resource management. You would have seen in the introduction what he's done in terms of a description of his works. But I could probably summarize that as he has a very broad understanding of natural systems, which is also complemented by a very strong understanding of spatial data, which has allowed him to work for various natural resource management agencies in the northern territory. And then later on with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, for example. What I've found really impressive is Luke's passion for embracing new technology. And he certainly has a very strong understanding of how to use various satellite-based spatial datasets to measure natural resource systems. And it's been great for Hydrochera to learn some of that from Luke. So without further ado, I'd like to hand over to Luke. And I think we're very lucky to have him here to share his knowledge on the Maloon Research Initiative. Thanks, Luke. Thank you, Richard. Very kind words. Thank you for that. Luke, you'll need to... Oh, yeah. That's it. There we go. So thanks, Richard. And also extend that to the Hydrochera team for inviting me to present this webinar. Firstly, I'd like to pay my respects to the First Nations people of the Ngunnawal and Ewan Country past, present and future generations that cover where I live in Canberra and the Ewan Country for where the Maloon Institute's research and catchment scale project is conducted. And that's extended then to all the First Nations people where our audience are located respectively. Also, I'd like to acknowledge the very generous and visionary efforts by Mr and Mrs Tony Koot for providing much of the resources and drive that established the Maloon Institute and this project. And backed by seed funding by Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, Southeast LLS, and of course the very extensive support by other partners, particularly ANU, led by Professor Steve Dovers. There are plenty of others that have also provided input, but it would be a long list to go through them all. So apologies. The Maloon Institute is a small group, but it's also punches well above its weight, but it does require and looks forward to the partnerships that we've built and the collaborations that we do because that's how we're going to get through all of this. So the Maloon Institute, we pride ourselves in establishing ourselves as Australia's premier scientific organisation in the landscape rehydration space. We are not for profit. We do actively demonstrate, monitor and inform on those rehydration practices that we'll talk about and Richard alluded to the two farms that we do have in the catchment that are operational farms in their own right. What do we do? Well, we're certainly all about water, the water quality and water quantity, but it extends into this integrated view of the landscape of the soil and the plants, the biodiversity of flora and fauna that even goes down to the micro flora and biology on the soil that also links in with our carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle. In doing so, all these components put together and the actions that we're going to talk about today has really shown signs that we can build resilience to drought, flood and fire these and climate extremes and moderate those effects. We're also recognised by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network as a one of five projects and we're certainly very excited to be a part of this group and recognised for the work that we're doing and hope that we can actually provide some solutions to the many, you know, 17 goals that they're trying to work on globally and how the work here we do locally can be informing that. So why is water key to reducing this climate change? Now, there's a whole subject matter on here, so I'm just summarised these key points here, but water is a major regulator of climate. I mean, when we talk about droughts, we're always looking to the sky for rain. And that rain is driven by the water cycle, the large water cycle. But there's also the smaller water cycle at the local scale. And that is connected to those carbon and nitrogen cycles as well. But water is that planetary thermostat. And even with those elevated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, water is essential to managing the biosphere and addressing the feedback loops in our climate system. So of course, good water management is critical. And the water cycle can have a dramatic and positive influence in successfully addressing these drought, floods, soil, health, food production and climate, as I'll go on to explain. Of course, the other part of the on-ground project is the works managed by Peter Hazel, Project Coordinator, and Max, who you see here, doing a astounding job, but also backed with other staff who have also assisted Bill McAllister and Gibson and many others as well, acknowledging them. So the Maloney and Rehydration Initiative, which is based 40 kilometres, a 40 minutes east of Canberra. It's just outside of Bundendorf, and we're effectively on the eastern side of the Great Dividing Range. In fact, the property that we have is split by the Great Dividing Range. You can see that red line over here, if I just point her options. There's the Great Dividing Range running along through here. And this is our main property here, the home farm. This is where the pilot project was initiated in 2006, along with great support from partners, Toe and Park Training, with Peter Andrews, who led that. And they're a major partner with the education and training aspects of what we've been doing here at the Maloney Institute and often run training programs. The rest of the catchment and landholders run through here. This is Maloney Creek, starting up at Calaganda National Park. And we've got Sandhills Creek here, another major tributary. Again, just east of the Great Dividing Range. It flows in and has a confluence with Maloney Creek before it exits out and becomes Reedy Creek at this point and goes down into the Shoal Haven. We've got 20 landholders. We're trying to address 50 kilometres of creeks and tributaries over a 23,000 hectare catchment. And you can get an idea of the array of instrumentation that we've already established. And to top this off, there's soil moisture sensors that are also started to go in as well. So I mentioned that we're a partnership with ANU, but also many other of our partners that form up the Maloney Institute Science Advisory Committee. And with that, an extensive stakeholder engagement since 2012, since the inception of TMI, that helped understand what were the key questions that would actually help identify what it is that we wanted to or needed to study and get results on. With that, we've described four pillars of research themes, land and water functionality, ecological biodiversity functionality, the economic cost benefit analysis. And that includes not only a farm productivity, but trying to incorporate natural capital economic cost benefit, the co-benefits. Of course the community outcomes because this is quite a social aspect as well about bringing the community along, bringing subject matter experts, local subject matter experts, including our indigenous First Nation people also who have the ability to be able to read the landscape and have worked with this landscape and understand how it functions. And what we could learn from that to still be able to have viable farming, to produce food and fibre for what we need in this day and age. Official findings that we've had 60% increase in stock carrying capacity on the flood plain within five years of the initial interventions at Malone Creek Home Farm. We've had a dramatic improvement in the volume of water and the quality of water leaving the farm. We've also generated resilience to the droughts and floods and with an extreme drought that we've just had recently. But remembering that when we initiated this in 2006 we're in the middle of the millennial drought. We've had a significant improvement in our biodiversity and habitat. We've increased our green surface area, which if we talk about the small water cycle, the green surface area or the volume of biomass, plants, trees, grass, shrubs, they are all the biotic pumps that help drive that small water cycle. Also provide the habitat. And in the cases of farm productivity, the farm production that is required. But we've also created this microclimate where we can also moderate those extreme heats of summer that we get in the area, as well as creating a warmer winter by the effect of the extra water cycling going on locally. An overall a much healthier environment. Give you a bit of a view of what that means. A few pictures now, this is what a few of the sites of after these interventions. In fact, the bioengineering we could call it, that the plants then take over, we intervene to try and stop the erosive degrading process that was happening, that was eroding out the creek beds and making the water flow faster. We understand where these natural steps are in the waterway, where the inputs are that are coming into the creek and where a placement of an intervention would go, a leaky weir for another term and then allow biology to come and take over and help them maintain these structures and work with the system to further slow it down, create the habitat, filter the water and slow it down even further. And the examples of what has occurred has really been quite extraordinary. Yes, it does, we try and source as much local materials, rocks and logs. So when trying to not bring in too many other external factors that we're trying to bring in local, this is what we can generate. And by even doing so, this hasn't stopped the fish passage or other fauna getting through along the creek lines. We're working with fisheries in New South Wales as well. And it seems to be that these natural systems working this way is what the native plants and fauna have adapted to. So Peter's point, just to give you a bit of an overview of just how much you can regenerate the system. It's another example of where we've now moved down further into the creek at one of the other land holdings. Working with these land holders has been fantastic. We can't do it without them. And this series of photos is October, 2019. We're still in the drought. We've actually had just a small shower before that. This is in December, when the structure was completed and we've had another little bit of rain. This is in February, so 2020. So this is how quickly you can turn these systems around to not to be flippant, but just add water. It is one of the critical drivers. Water is life, but it also water in the landscape helps generate life. It's not just about in the floodplains and the creeks as well. The principles of what we're doing of sowing the flow down in the case of the creek, trying to get it to spread out naturally as it would do on the floodplains and recharge those aquifers. Similarly, even at the top of this ridge line, which is just only the next ridge line down from the Great Dividing Range, which you can see in the background there. But even these ridge lines, right from the top down onto the floodplains, everything counts. And so here, Tarwon Park Training ran a course and helped in demonstrating what to do while training at the same time. We've been able to create a leaky contour where it slows that water down, gets the water down into the soil rather than just continuing to run off and down that slope. And that slope going off there in the distance is an easily a 30 to 40 degree slope. And yet these contours and then the tree plantings have really created this infiltration capability. And within three years, had phenomenal growth. In fact, in the background there, there's a two step leaky weir system. The one that's, the second one closer to where the drop-off is, has fills as overflow from the one above it. But the one above was very strategically placed by again understanding, reading the landscape. And what ended up happening is that it was put in in 2018 and the shower of water that we got filled it and it has stayed filled. Even throughout the drought period, the extreme drought that we had right through to the end of 2019, it has maintained water there. And even though the one below it will fill, but then and then the water will infiltrate and it does go dry at times. It's still doing its job, but the one above has stayed with water. And we have not intervened with plants there, but I can assure you that there are wetland species, particularly your sedges and or Cypirus that have taken over and have naturally occurred. So when you rebuild and restabilize and rehydrate these systems and understand where these steps are in the landscape, you can really promote the vegetation, the biology to come back in. And we've noticed this in the major step diffusion system that we've got at home farm, that within a year of building it across a period of 2017 through to 2018, that the frogs have moved back in, the bird life has moved in. So rebuilding these systems, habitat attracts the flora, the fauna to come back in. And it helps promote and rebuild and get the diversity going and it continues to strengthen. So where does Hydrotera also fit in? As Richard mentioned, he and I have been working on this and with the funding that we got from Landcare, in particular through the Department's federal funding of the smart farms, it has really helped us to be able to now put in place much of what we've had planning because the resourcing to do such a thing is quite extensive and the requirements. Do take a fair bit of dollars and we could certainly do with some more. But here's what we can do and the monitoring plan and system specifications might hat off to Richard and his team, but particularly Richard, who has driven this and through our combined network of subject matter experts, but particularly Richard's hard work to pull this together that covers everything from all the large scale design right down to the details of metadata and naming conventions and data management. I am very excited to have Hydrotera as part of this team because without them, it's a major step in the right direction. So as an example, we've got two major climate stations. These are a step up from the standard weather station. 31 soil moisture sites are being implemented, six stream gauges, 70 ground water piezometers. We've also been doing a heap of monitoring with our other partners, cyber labs, with our satellite monitoring products and the extensive floor and fauna monitoring that we're doing with frogs and birds and fish, LFA transects or landscape functional analysis transects devised by David Tomway and the rapid assessment and riparian condition, just to name a few of the key factors that we're doing. An example of the climate station that we're doing here, it has the classic temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, but also incoming and outgoing solar radiation. We've also got a heat flux plate. We're trying to understand the heat dynamics of the energy coming in from the sun, how much is reflected back, how much is absorbed and transferred into the system and where does this energy go? And how do we understand how this system works? Because this relates to how do we understand what's going on with our climate and the climate extremes and what are we doing here and how does it inform the effect that we're having on the local climate and what it potentially is doing to our, feeding into the climate change scenario? So moisture sensors, I mean, these have only just gone in recently and we had quite a nice little rainfall event but then a flood event and up in here is where we can see that recharge. So this is down at 1.5 metres, but they're at, they position these sensors at 10, 30, 50, 80 and a metre 10 and a metre 50. And we can see the recharge that happens and the rate of that recharge and the depth of it. The interesting thing was the recharge that happened at this low end. We hope that what we'll be doing is be able to connect that up with the piezometers to show the linkage between where this water goes, where the recharge happens. Even recently after that flood event, what we were also picking up in the 10 centimetre sensor was this very slight ion or flux that speaks about how the small water cycle or indicates the small water cycle at work where we have the dew fall that is just a slight recharge and then the plants can be the biotic pumps for the day and hopefully the small water cycle. If you've got good leaf area index, the more dew you attract. And we can see that slight rise and fall on a diurnal basis there. All early indications. Our deterrer have been working with us to collate our telemetered string gauge data which has a range of sensors on it. This one's level. And we can see that the six sensors that we saw from the top of the catchment right through to the bottom. Also, this Santil's one here, this one here in particular is just before the confluence with the Malone. So it's an input. We're trying to measure what is the input coming from that. And it's a very interesting creek because there's slightly different input that comes from this one. We can see the relative similarities of the pulses that come through and how it flows down through the system. The timing of it and the peaks and troughs. Now, what these leaky weirs fundamentally are doing is that instead of these peaks being really high peaks and then dropping straight back down to zero, which is what we were finding because the system would drain so quickly. We've slowed that water up and we've maintained water through the system through the dry times. And it tops up again with these smaller inputs. It's the major flow events where it overtops that really recharges the flood plains. Here we're looking at salt. And this again is where we can see that there is a bit of a salt influx that comes in from the Santil's catchment. We know that there is a slightly different soil there but we also the hydrogeology that sits behind or underneath is that allows this salt pulse to come through. However, you know it's still just under the world health regulations and yet the rest of the EC levels in the rest of the creek are well below what are deemed safe levels. I mentioned the satellite monitoring that we're doing and partnering with Cybo Labs. Fantastic products that they've been generating to look at total standing dry matter. There's our flood plain here and the hill slopes and up onto the great dividing range over here looking at the non-green versus bare versus the green pasture growth. So it's a real mixture of fine to understand tree shrubs, pasture and where our bare ground is. The interesting thing we've been able to do also is that they tap into the 30 plus years of time series data set that goes back to the land set. So it allows us that our baseline has automatically extended back. Very valuable in terms of understanding what have we measured so far and what are we seeing today and being able to monitor that coupled with the Sentinel that we get a 10 day response. I've been able to provide as a product and a link to all our landholders. They can tap into and be able to monitor their own properties, gauge what they're doing from their land use and land management from a day to day but more likely from a week to week basis and help get that feedback loop and give it a spatial context as well. So the Maloon Institute, we are certainly working at a various scales. Here we are at the local scale, we would call it the catchment scale, the Maloon catchment, but fundamentally the principles behind this can address a lot of the global problems. And these global agricultural problems are very well documented, whether it's food production that we need to increase to meet the demand or the industrial farming practices that have in the past that we've seen have had a negative impact, whether we're talking about pesticides and herbicides or soil erosion that we're actually also dealing with less rainfall. Well, in Australia, we're already living in a continent that's recognized as being the driest habitat continent. So water is really important for us, especially when it only makes up fresh water, it only makes up 2.5% of the world's water. And one third of our planet is severely degraded and that we lose so much soil to erosion. So the examples of what we've shown even with the leaky contours slowing that water down and reducing erosion but even encouraging more plant growth that helps protect the soil and slow down the rate of erosion but also even at these different steps with the leaky weirs that as the floodplains have always operated before they were drained or the water was just rushing through and taking resources with it that if we can slow that down and spill that out on the floodplains we can actually rebuild those floodplains and get them to function and deposit the silt and the nutrients back onto the floodplains as they've always done. And we're dealing with the biodiversity issues and we've had some very good results so far. So the challenges we face well, water is one of the biggest ones and we've already seen water scarcity in our own country, Australia but also around the world and particularly having fresh water that has the quality that is potable and usable by not only humans but also our stock and for irrigations where it needs to be. So if we don't deal with the water issues and so we talk about you've heard me talk about rehydration well, the opposite to that is if that we keep degrading and dehydrating the land then that leads to desertification and we know where that leads to. So we need to turn this around and water will help drive that but it is also part of the triangle of doing it to encourage plants that help protect the soil, rebuild the soil get the soil fertility going through microbes and nutrient cycling which also then in the wise words of Walter Yenna for every one part of extra soil carbon that you can get back into the soil you can increase your water holding capacity by eight to 10 times. So there's a lot of good reasons why we need to look at the water and the nutrient cycle and the carbon cycle or it's all integrated in this systems thinking. This is the way that we're going to be able to not only be able to feed the world and the fiber that was required but also be able to have the water resources that is required for people's consumption and industrial use. So soil and erosion is another big issue. It's high on the UN SDSN requirements and that we lose so much soil. This also leads to some of the problems that we've been seeing with the Great Barrier Reef with the amount of soil or silt that ends up on the reef but also the soil that runs down and fills up small and large dams and reducing their capacity, reducing their and increasing possible problems with blue-green algae blooms and water quality issues that cost money to fix. We've got a naturally filtering system here that can do a lot of the work, do a lot of the heavy lifting, not only in that result but also for all our producers. And so that linkage of the poor soil and water management can turn the land from a carbon sink to a carbon source. And this is where we can really work with getting our carbon sink, the soil and our plants to start extracting more of the carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere. And the more that we protect that soil and nurture that soil, the more that we're able to manage our water, not only to enhance the plant growth but as a filtering system because the water still will eventually go through the soil, the hydrological regolith system and interact with the stream and then it's filtered. And by then the water that's leaving the property is then in as good, if not better condition to the next downstream users, whoever they are. So simply the solution is right under our feet of how we deal with this. And we need to restore that balance, the soil, water, plant, triangle, the balance with biodiversity, flora and fauna and how we actually deal with the increase in the energy or heat that is heating up our climate and creating those extremes that we're seeing and we seem to be getting more and more of these climate extremes and they seem to be getting more extreme. So we need to be able to modify and regulate that. So the Maloone Institute from this, we've built this network and we're actively now in five project areas, as you can see there, in Western Australia, North Queensland and Southern New South Wales and we're actively working on solidifying other projects in these other areas indicated. And we're certainly looking to work with more project areas. We are work on adapting the principles of what we do here and that they can be applied to many other parts of the country, even globally and working with the local landholders and the local subject matter experts including our indigenous First Nation people. It's about, it's driven by the community and where we come in and bring also our partners to help understand what are the actions that need to be undertaken, how does it fit and be adapted to that region and those local situations and fit in with what is the landholders or stakeholders desired outcomes. And so it is really at a property scale but also at a catchment scale where this works the best because we notice that we get much better benefits when we all work together. And so in summary, the Maloon Institute works on improved water quality and we're reducing the impact of climate change. We're certainly moderating against climate extremes by improving that drought resilience and preparedness and improving farmers productivity and profitability. We've also increased the biodiversity, healthier ecosystems and by doing this we're also then increasing the healthier nutrient dense food which leads to a healthy human beings which also has an impact, dare I say it on the cost of our health systems. There are so many co-benefits linked to all of this and of course there's the economic, social and economic benefits whether we're talking about regional townships that prosper from the extra productivity, the extra profitability, the healthier landscape that helps attract not only tourists but also to encourage people to look at even living in those regions. I have to say thank you again to Richard and if you would need to contact us. So I'll just part with this and saying that we're a small team, we work on that we have partnerships and collaborations and that we're building this extensive monitoring program. We certainly need more resources to help even make this monitoring even more extensive but we also need the research capabilities. So I call out to those people who've got resources who would like to be involved with this project and the researchers to also be involved in analysing and reporting on the data that's being collected. And you can connect through to us through these links and I believe that we're going to share this presentation. There's a link here for one of our videos. We've also got a YouTube site that with many other educational and informative videos that have been put together. I thank you very much for your time. Well, thanks very much Luke for an excellent presentation on what the Malone Institute's up to. I think in summary before I move to the Q&A questions, the key message here is that solutions can be simple. And fundamentally what the Malone Institute does is a simple approach. You retain the water in the catchments and then biodiversity returns. And the more you spread that water and recharge those catchments, the more resilience they have to the variability that we are now faced in terms of climate change. Why? Because they're more water for those plants to draw upon. What I've noticed having worked with the Malone Institute for a while, there's actually a lot of government support for this side of things. And there's a lot of international support for this as well. Luke, I'm not sure that you mentioned the United Nations classification that's been applied to the Malone Institute. So perhaps before we get started with these questions, do you wanna just explain a little bit about that United Nations program and the classification that the Malone Institute's site has on it? Yeah, so we're involved with, there's four other projects in the United States and China, South America and the UK where we're working with the UN, but there are the 17 SDSNs. And I think we comfortably tick off on eight of those and there's about five others that we have a significant influence with. And so we've been allocated a partnership role. There's no funding involved. There's many other projects that they need to throw resources towards, particularly in the third world countries, which they do a fantastic job of doing. But it does give us the linkage with many of these other projects. And we're hoping that the results from this and many of the principles can be adapted to these other regions across the world as well. So it's really, it's not an actively funded connection, but it is certainly one that gives us some a high level of recognition and interest in what we're doing. So Luke, just before we move to questions, what does the SDSN stand for? The Sustainable Development Solutions Network, that UN had identified 17 critical items such as water quality, water availability, food health, ecosystem health, human health, less soil erosion, better resilience to droughts or climate extremes and then climate change. Building that resilience, trying to reduce the impact so that we're not going through this crash and boom cycle and try and treat that crash and boom out. Very similar to what I was even describing with even what we've done, simply even the creek with the stream bed, implementation of the leaky weirs is to take that crash and boom out and moderate that energy that's coming down the system and with that carrying away those resources. So David Tongwe would have described it that the more you have a leaky landscape, the more you're leaking resources. And Walter Yano described it well, that our landscape used to work really well that for every 10 rain drops that fell on the ground, nine would soak in and only maybe one would run off or evaporate. We've turned that around and we're now nine rain drops in every 10 run off or evaporate and only one barely sinks in and does any benefit. So again, when a system, a landscape system, an ecosystem fails, it's soon degrades and eventually will become a desert and we need to rehydrate which is the opposite to desertification. Okay, thanks Luke. We might move to these questions. So one from Giuseppe Griggo. What is the most difficult challenge when it comes to using satellite data and comparing it with field data? Yeah, it's a good question Giuseppe. Having done many years of doing the research and development up in the northern dry tropics and Savannah lands. Though it does take a fair bit of work to understand how you can validate and calibrate that satellite imagery. But I think where we noticed the benefits was that when we got much cleverer and the computing systems allowed to be able to not just compare the classic one image over another and subtract the difference which is where we started off with land clearing or burn fire scars. We can become much cleverer and this is where cyber labs have done very well in understanding how you can get these algorithms that can actually pull together this information and insert validated ground control points on biomass or ground cover levels and then using artificial intelligence or machine learning to then build a repertoire that is relevant to the location. So it's a different algorithm or machine learning that is applied in the say the dry tropics or semiotropic range lands of northern Australia versus the southern highlands where we are or central Australia. So we understand that there are different dynamics there's different responses to those trigger pulse events of rainfall and the landscape that it sits in. And so yes, it does require a certain amount of validation but as we've got much better computing systems the team at cyber labs have proven that they can really tighten the accuracy up and can get quite accurate predictions of what that biomass equates to on the ground as we cycle through the seasons. But the other beauty of that is that it becomes much more informative and those people that have been working in that area it even gets to the point that you can actually understand the signature and response that you're getting in that satellite imagery. Even though we can't see the individual plant and forb species, you can get a sense for the type of species makeup. If you're, this is where the subject matter experts come in they understand that on that land in that type of soil in that location and given that time of season and the type of rainfall you get a very good feel for even what other species composition that you're getting and the response that's within that measurement that you're getting and even such things as even getting an idea of whether or not is it a perennial or annual based plant composition. So a good question there Giuseppe but yes, a lot of hard work has gone into that and again, cyber labs have really led the way in how to actually make extra benefits out of this amazing technology and be able to apply it on the ground for real outcomes whether it's from a research point of view or equally importantly for the land managers out there. Thanks Luke for that very comprehensive answer. Next question from Glenis Batchelor. How or are you managing the influx of saline water? So I suppose that's about how I'm managing the salinity aspects that would occur from rehydrating catchments. Another very good question and very pertinent to a number of parts of our country. Again, it's a combination of things. So if we're talking about, let's just, I mean, we all accept that there is naturally salt in our landscape. We've got a very old landscape too. And there's even minor amount of salt even in the rainfall and depending on how close you are to the coast, there's naturally salt in our water. So how do we manage that? Well, our landscape here, the Australian landscape actually had already formed a process of how it dealt with it. And one of the key things is that our soils and their clay make up, and I'm trying not to be too technical here, but effectively if that soil and the soil profile dries out, the clay particles have less chance to bind and hold that salt. So they become loose, let's call it. And if you do get rainfall and if that soil is not protected in order to roads, then salt is mobilized. And it can be mobilized across the landscape into the creek or it can be even mobilized down through the soil profile and further down and collect somewhere. Now that has happened in the natural processes, but that's salt. If we're actually managing our soil well and the clay and the microbes that are doing their job, that salt can actually be bound and be still beneficial because we as plants and animals need salt and minerals to survive. There's a certain amount we need. Of course, the old added job, everything in moderation. So the landscape knew how to manage that and make it available and the plants could extract it where needed. And of course, the animals would eat that and the plant and take up the salt and minerals. If you've got a degraded system, that's not working anymore. The function of the soil is now degraded and the salt can become more easily mobilized. From a point of view then that we've heard about where the water tables moved up and moved the salt up. Well, when you've got a degraded system and a degraded system as in the hydrogeological system that's working, that's out of balance again. And again, some of our groundwater naturally has this salt. It's sitting in the base rock or it's filtered down through the soil over the eons. But if we end up that thin layer of topsoil that if it's actually functioning well with as it should from a plant, soil, water functionality integrated that that freshwater lens that you would naturally get in that topsoil that benefits the plant growth, that freshwater lens will naturally being less dense hold any intrusion of salt coming up being forced up by groundwater maybe that freshwater lens will hold that salt in place. And that way still allow the plants or crops to grow quite well and not interfere. And meanwhile, you're actually making that soil function well that it also continues to hold or bind the salt and minerals and the microbes do their job in making them available to the plants as required. So you can manage salt in the system. We've just got to understand how the plants, soil and water work together particularly in that top one to two metres where it's critical for plant growth. Okay, Luke, thanks for that answer. I might add to that the work we've been doing with the Maloon Institute's been looking at effectively the water balance of these catchments and the processes of how water moves through these catchments. It's interesting tonight that a lot of these areas used to be prone to salinity and with the changes in rainfall patterns that's become less of an issue with less water held up in the catchments. As you put those dams in place, you tend to, you will lead to some raising of the water table but if that's done in parallel with the other works that they're doing such as letting the vegetation re-establish itself then you get to a new equilibrium. So it's, in terms of managing that it is about understanding those hydrogeological processes of the catchment scale as well. And there's a lot of data being collected by the Maloon Institute to look at that. Richard, just on a quick point with correction. I would prefer that not using the word dams because there's certainly, I don't want to give people the wrong idea that we've built dams. They are certainly leaky whiz. They're absolutely designed to leak water not only overtopping them, but to go, you know, to leak through it. It is quite a point of difference because we don't want to give the idea that these are dams per se. Leaky whiz it is. Okay, we've got a few questions to get through Luke so we better keep moving on this. Scott Wright asked, can you give more information? Are key lines and how or what resources you use to find these lines? Your words may have been natural land steps and water inputs. Yeah, good question. Look, reading the landscape is one way of being able to do it. Some people are very clever about doing it naturally like there's such of Peter Andrews and Stuart Andrews. I found that from a point of view of looking at using LiDAR that that helped understand where those natural steps are. Other parts are actually beyond understand by even looking for signals of plants and how they interact as a way of understanding where those steps might be. But what it's really trying to say is that these steps can be at a micro scale and at also in a macro scale. So a macro scale is the Murray-Darling Basin. There's a whole series of steps all the way down to the Cuyol. There's also smaller steps that even within a paddock you can have these steps occurring where there's that break and slope. So this is why we say that it is good to go and get the training to understand what it means to read that landscape, look for the features but also then better still to make sure that you're putting these things in the right place that you do need to have some sort of capability to do even surveying of a type. And it can be formal surveying or sort of a more sort of backyard style surveying to understand where the contour line needs to be. Keyline is a different style of thing because you're sort of redirecting water whereas we're trying to spread water laterally and in doing so because these are leaky contours by spreading the water laterally that you're actually then getting to rehydrate 100% of the country down slope of that whole contour whereas if it wasn't there the water would just run down into the gully and possibly only hydrate maybe 10% of the country but because you've channeled all that energy into a smaller area and gravity is gonna drive that you then are susceptible to erosion. So it's a combination of things. There's a whole four day training course on explaining all of that and I'm not gonna do it justice in five minutes. Sorry Scott, but there is some very good information about how you read the landscape and this is why it's very important to be able to then understand how that adapts to your local environment and how the plants actually help create those steps. You can even go to a hillside and see how even individual grasses create micro steps and if they join up they can create that leaky contour. Nature already does that. There's examples of it. Here, we're trying to fast track that by intervening because we need to try and stop the erosion and the dehydration and by intervening we actually fast track the response and the recovery. All right. Thanks Luke. Another question from Scott was does this approach also point to those areas that suffered fires and floods as sufferers of poor land management practices? With the question Scott, I think the broad answer to that is yes. We could always be doing much better land management, vegetation management, et cetera. Yes, there's also been proactively where just poor land management has exacerbated that. And so my general response is is that throughout the catchment whether or not we're even talking about and I don't wanna just highlight farmlands either because a lot of our national parks in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland recently suffered extreme fires and that's partly because of the dehydrated effects. But it was also about that the whole landscape itself had been drained much faster and that exacerbated that was exacerbated by the extreme drought. So those two things in combination ended up leading to what were very extreme and devastating fires. And so I look at it that the principles again whether we're talking about farmlands or even our native, natural, sorry, our state parks or national reserves, they all need to be managed with this in mind and where we can to try and encourage that rehydration which will actually help promote the vegetation growth and people are worried about that that promotes that vegetation growth with fields but this is where then a combination of if it is hydrated and there is a level of water in the system whether it's in the plants or in the leaf litter that we can actually reduce the severity of those fires. This is why we say we can moderate that if also that we've got our waterways and our wetlands and swamps that naturally would have been occurring there they help break up the pattern of just a fire be able to pick up speed and blast through an area that these green belts or wet zones can actually help slow and retard a fires progress in building up such energy. So there's a number of factors there let alone having water in the system that our firefighters and our landholders can utilize there's many other things there but also a rehydrated and a system that's creating the biotic pumps dare I say also attracts more rainfall because we understand enough these days of how plants and the water cycle and the cooling effect of plants actually helps benefit by attracting more rain bearing clouds to bring rain to that area. A bare ground hot ground will actually help exacerbate and reduce the ability or push rain bearing clouds away let alone if it does rain it tends to run off much faster. Hope that helps Scott. Excellent answer Luke. Peter Fisher wants to know have you any thoughts about how the results from this site might be applied to drier areas such as Northwest Victoria? Yeah, very good question. There's certainly all these principles still hold true and again it's about adapting it to those local conditions. I point to such examples that look at very much a similar principle of what we're doing the EMU project hats off to that team over there in Western Australia and they've been doing work in Western New South Wales and I believe even in Northwest and Victoria and dare I say it even the example that for the last look almost 30 years now of Woodgreen just north a large pastoral property North of Alice Springs by Rob Purvis. He's shown that again those principles of water ponding in a very much an arid desert environment certainly has made his property stand out when I was working in the area from 2003 with the satellite monitoring his property stood out like the proverbial. Now that there's very good examples of how this can work at that local scale and imagine if we could actually get the community working together that the benefits could actually be much more extensive. So yes, absolutely the principles can be and it's about then picking the right plants that suit the environment to suit the outcomes of what it is you're after whether it's land for biodiversity and nature or whether it's for production systems there is a way of how you can get that system to regenerate particularly through rehydrations activities and actions that can fast track that and then working with your local subject matter experts to then help you understand what plants will actually then help to build and drive that system. All right, look good answers there. We've got a couple left to get through and we've got a very short amount of time. So let's Steve Kimber from I'm not sure where Steve's from but his question is what are the regulatory impediments to these projects? For example, in deception of overland flow. Steve, good question. Again, it really does come down to your state, territory and even your local government rules and regulations. As an example for us here in New South Wales it is the in stream on creeks of a level order of three or above are highly regulated. It does take quite a lot of work. We are working with the regulators to try and see how we can get the type of work that we do get a special sort of dispensation. That's not to say to throw away the regulatory approval altogether because we do wanna make sure it's done properly and not just haphazardly. In terms of across the broader landscape though and that includes all your ephemeral little gullies or hill slopes to a large degree there are the regulatory impediments that you would find in a recognized waterway. But I do always defer to this making sure that you just check with your local authorities. But broadly speaking, that's our experience here in New South Wales. I think the same is said to be in Victoria. Queensland and Western Australia have slightly different rulings on that. But we always encourage people to look into the local regulatory aspects. Tap into some of your local subject matter experts and others that are working in that area to find out what is possible. But broadly across your landscape you have a fair bit more leeway and a lot more opportunities of this is where your active production systems are and what you could achieve. Particularly if you don't have a creek and a floodplain system. All right Luke, excellent answer. Last question, we've just gone a little bit over time. So this is the last one for the day. Thank you very much for your questions. So Simon Winfield, can I ask about the 60% increase in stock carrying capacity? Has this been achieved with no change in how the stock are managed? Therefore was rehydration the only change made? Good question Simon. I would have to say that it hasn't been able to be totally discerned or separated the rehydration effects from the land management effects. And what I can say is this is exactly why I'm really looking forward to the research where now we've got all these other landholders that have gone that are part of this project. And so what we've got now is a range of landholders that have practiced conventionally or some other or regeneratively let's call it and a bunch of people in between on a sliding scale. So this is where we're hoping that as we then change or rehydrate and do these actions down through the catchment and then we can actually see what is the difference between land use and management and the rehydrated effect. If that's now the constant as we now extend this through the catchment we hopefully get a very much a better idea of what part of it is related to land use, land management. And the rehydration. But look, the two do go together. It's very difficult to try and separate that. Largely, I suppose, there definitely was a bit of a change in land management but it was also the fact that it was such a degraded part of the floodplain that it really had and we were still within drought that it took a fair bit of time. There was only so much you could still do but the rehydration effects really did kickstart it because without that there wasn't even the water in the system during the back end of the millennial drought 2006 to 2009 to even really get things going. So it was quite amazing that the rehydration really underpinned that change and the land management came as a co-benefit once we got plants growing again and then the careful continued management of the grazing enterprise meant that the benefits then really started to be seen. Good question, Simon. We hope to be able to have more results for you in due course. All right, well, thank you very much everyone and a big thank you to Luke from the Maloon Institute for today's presentation. I thought that was excellent. Feel free to reach out to the Maloon Institute or to ourselves if you've got any more questions and that concludes today's webinar. Many thanks. Thank you everyone.