CATPlus

The CATPlus project is further developing and applying the existing Catchment Analysis Tool (CAT) model to evaluate the FFI CRC farming system impacts with a focus on catchment water resources. Ultimately, this model will allow catchment managers and other external users to better predict the impacts of perennial vegetation systems on water management, including impacts on specific assets either targeted or dispersed.

The CAT model links farming systems models to groundwater and stream processes. It was developed by the Victorian Department of Primary Industries and the former CRC Salinity to assess the catchment-scale impacts of current and new farming systems.

Initial work is focused on a specific catchment in Victoria (Wannon) and New South Wales (Tarcutta) to ensure research outputs are directly applied and model improvements tested. The project will also provide modelling support to other FFI CRC projects in an advisory capacity through the production of process guidelines and the development of landcover scenarios in the Wannon and Tarcutta catchments that are applicable elsewhere.

Objectives:

• Allow project partners and CRC participants to assess the impacts of selected on-ground actions, prioritised by the FFI CRC, on end of catchment, or across-catchment, outcomes in terms of water quality and quantity via the improved CAT model
• Improve hydrological model outputs through developing better standards and guidelines for data collection and manipulation, and through improvements to the structuring of data within the current model.

Activities

The exact boundaries of the project’s two study areas have been determined for Tarcutta and the Wannon catchments. Necessary data layers are being obtained and developed with calibration of the CAT model for the two areas underway.

Much effort is focused on identifying landuse scenarios that are ‘socio-economically’ realistic for the catchments under study such as understanding how changing rural demographics and economic externalities, as well as land suitability, are impacting landuse in each catchment.

The creation of local-experts groups is providing critical input into the development of land-use scenarios that employ socio-economic considerations that are of greater use to real-world catchment managers than those based primarily or only on biophysical catchment characteristics.

For more information email project leader, Bruce Gill.