Search

"October 2003".MDFRC item.Background 1. There is considerable evidence that the overall health of the River Murray system is in decline and no longer in a sustainable condition. While the effects of such decline are more immediately obvious in some parts of the river system than others, the scientific evidence for overall loss of river health is strong. 2. There are multiple threats to the health of the River Murray system. These include changes to flow regime, habitat destruction, increased salt and sediment load, loss of connectivity due to structural alterations, unsustainable floodplain management, and introduction of exotic pests. Of these threats, changes to flow regime are critical and require immediate attention if the River Murray is to be returned to a 'healthy working river’ condition, and maintained that way for future generations. Other threats are being addressed by the MDBC under related programs covered by the Living Murray process, and the MDBC Integrated Catchment Management strategy. 3. Following earlier investigations, in April 2002, the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council called for a comprehensive assessment of the costs and benefits to the environment, industries and communities of returning additional water to the River Murray as environmental flows. The Ministerial Council chose three environmental flow 'reference points’ for analysis; 350, 750 and 1500 GL/yr. Proposed structural and operational modifications were also to be assessed. An independent Scientific Reference Panel (SRP) was contracted by the MDBC in October 2003 under the chair of Professor Gary Jones, Chief Executive, Cooperative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology to advise the MDBC and Ministerial Council on potential ecological benefits. 4. The MDBC provided the SRP with three different operational scenarios to be assessed for each of the flow 'reference points’. These scenarios were not proposed water recovery or management options, rather, examples of what may be achievable through improved river operations. For each of the 350, 750 and 1500 GL options a 'Cap’, 'b’ and 'c’ operational scenario was assessed. The 'Cap’ option provided an environmental flow regime based on current river operational rules. The 'b’ and 'c’ options were based on modelled flows targeting various ecosystem locations and specific ecological indicators. 5. This report presents the interim results of the ecological assessment undertaken by the SRP up to August 2003, with minor modifications made in October 2003 in response to international peer reviewers’ comments. It provides estimates of 'ecological potential’ for the reference points under consideration. It is designed to serve as a basis for discussion and review amongst scientists, government officials and the broad community. It is not the definitive or final statement of the SRP on ecological benefits potentially arising from the flow volume reference points. The final report is due for submission to MDBC in mid-2004.

"June 2000".Project Number: Unavailable.MDFRC item.The Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council (MDBMC) implemented a Cap on all water diversions effective June 1997. The Cap was seen as an essential first step in implementing a more sustainable flow regime. However, it is recognised that further work is required to establish management systems that will: - maintain and, where possible, improve existing flow regimes to protect and enhance the riverine environment; and - achieve sustainable consumptive use by developing and managing the water resources of the River Murray system to meet ecological, commercial and social needs. The next step is the development of a flow management plan for the major river systems which will maximise environmental benefits whilst meeting the general requirements of existing users. These flow management plans will recognise that improving river health is not just a matter of improving flow regimes but may require complementary activities. A key issue to be resolved before a flow management plan could be developed for the River Murray system was the establishment of environmental flow regimes for the River Murray and the lower Darling River. The MDBMC Water Policy Committee considered that the most effective way to proceed with the establishment of environmental flow regimes would be to review the adequacy of current flow regimes by the use of a Scientific Panel. The Scientific Panel approach is a rapid appraisal of the environmental condition and requirements of the riverine ecosystem by a multi-disciplinary team with local and scientific expertise. Advice provided by the Scientific Panel would be considered by the MDBMC and contribute to the development of a Flow Management Strategy for the River Murray and to negotiations with the States on the actions necessary to implement the cap. The Scientific Panel method has been successfully employed in Australia on other large river systems, for example along the Darling River in Queensland and New South Wales (Thoms et al. 1996), and the Snowy River in Victoria (Erskine et al. 1996). First derived in Australia following on from the work in South Africa on the Building Blocks procedure (King and Louw 1998), it employs a sound scientific method to provide a range of recommendations on environmental flows to water resource managers. The method is recommended in situations that require a relatively rapid appraisal and recommendations for water management (Burgess and Thoms 1997).

Crossrail Archaeology Series, 3, This report discusses how much of Crossrail, London's latest railway, lies hidden beneath its streets. It is visible only where new stations have appeared and tunnel entrances formed. At many of these places existing buildings have had to be adapted or removed to accommodate the new railway. Buildings have much to tell us about the lives and livelihoods of others, and Crossrail ensured that any building affected by the works was surveyed by their team of archaeologists before any work began. This book considers what the buildings and structures examined in this way have told us about the changing face of London. Each chapter takes as its theme buildings that shared common functions or characteristics, such as the offices that lay in the way of the capital's new stations or the former industrial buildings that clustered around the railway's new tunnel portals. The background to each theme is set out before specific buildings are described and interpreted. Details of the buildings and structures, from pubs to power stations, appear in the gazetteer at the rear of the book.

"February 2002".Project Number: Environmental Flows and Water Quality Objectives for the River Murray M/STR/1.MDFRC item.1.1 Setting the scene i. The health of a river is determined by its flow regime, the condition of its catchment & floodplain lands and in-channel habitats, and its water quality. These attributes must be considered holistically. Environmental flow allocations are an essential component of river management, but not sufficient alone to ensure a healthy river. Any decision to trade off flow requirements against other necessary management actions must be made with an understanding of the potential negative consequences. ii. From the outset, it was the unanimous and unequivocal opinion of this and previous expert panels that returning the River Murray System to a healthy working condition would require major improvements to river management – more environmental water, improved habitat condition, improved catchment & floodplain management, and better water quality. iii. A healthy working river is one that is managed to provide a sustainable compromise, agreed to by the community, between the condition of the river and the level of human use (see section 2.5). It was not the role of the ERP, or scientists in general, to decide upon the compromise between the competing values of production, ecosystem services and the natural environment. Rather, the ERP was asked to identify the level of work that will sustain indefinitely the ecological objectives first articulated by the Community Reference Panel and adopted by the Ministerial Council (see section 2.6). iv. The evolution of the degraded ecological condition of the River Murray is summarised. In the early 1900’s abstraction of water for consumptive use was low compared with modern levels, but water quality impacts would have commenced as a result of catchment clearing. The construction of Hume Dam and the locks and weirs on the lower Murray initiated an increased rate of degradation in ecological condition. This was accelerated by the rapid expansion in water abstraction for irrigation from the mid-1950s onwards. It is likely that during the 1960s or 1970s, ecological condition deteriorated to a point where the River Murray could no longer be considered as healthy. By 2001, the ecological condition of the River Murray is described as significantly impaired, and therefore unhealthy. v. The future condition of the River Murray System is clearly dependent on our actions now and over the coming years. Ecological condition continues to degrade under the present Cap and current river operations. Returning the River Murray System to a healthy condition will require major improvements to river management – significant environmental flow allocations, improved habitat condition, improved catchment & floodplain management, and better water quality. 1.2 Expert Reference Panel Assessment Process vi. The Expert Reference Panel (ERP) was appointed by the MDBC Environmental Flows and Water Quality Objectives Project Board. It has worked independently but has maintained extensive consultation with the Project Board, Project Team, and Community & Jurisdictional Reference Panels. vii. The ERP has adopted the Ministerial Council’s project objectives and has linked these to a suite of desired system level ecological outcomes and system level attributes for a healthy, working River Murray System. viii. The ERP has adopted a system level approach to assessing flow requirements and the potential ecological benefits offered by the flow management packages. This means that the net ecological benefits of any flow package or other management option (structural or operational) were considered across the entire length of the river system and its floodplain. Hence, the ecological assessments herein do not specifically address the management of individual river reaches, or floodplain wetlands and forests. Regional natural resource management agencies and river & catchment groups currently address issues at this scale. This report is designed to compliment their activities. ix. The system level approach adopted by the ERP led to a focus on five system level ecohydrological attributes for the River Murray System: -flow volume -flow distribution (pattern) -flow variability -connectivity (within and between the river channel and its floodplain) -water quality x. This report identifies the key threats to these attributes, and the Environmental Flow Requirements (EFRs) to address them. Key hydrological indicators used to assess short-term environmental benefits of the various options are described. 1.3 Performance Targets xi. Because of the lack of precise knowledge linking river flows to ecological condition it is extremely difficult to develop quantitative performance targets for improved management of river health. But, the river health concept does lend itself to a risk-based assessment framework, and it is this approach that the ERP has adopted in setting specific targets for river management actions. xii. The key outcome that the ERPs risk-based assessment has considered is: “Having a healthy, working River Murray System”. In this context, the key risk assessment is centred on the question: ”If we do x, what is the likelihood or probability of having a healthy working River Murray System?”. xiii. It is the considered opinion of the ERP that there is a substantial risk a working river will not be in a healthy state when key system level attributes of the flow regime are reduced below two/thirds of their natural level. xiv. Based on this ‘guidance value’ the ERP derived probability categories for successful environmental flows restoration. When key flow attributes are greater than two/thirds of their natural level, there is a high probability or likelihood of achieving a healthy river. When the same flow attributes are greater than half of their natural level, there is a moderate probability of achieving a healthy river. Below half natural, the probability of having a healthy river is low. xv. Caveat: The ‘two/thirds natural’ guidance level applies only to regulated and other impounded rivers. It is a target for river restoration, not a level for ‘acceptable degradation’ or ‘sustainable diversion’ of minimally impacted rivers. xvi. Caveat: These probability categories presume that the river offers suitable habitat and water quality for the growth and survival of native plants and animals. As already noted, the full benefits of environmental flow restoration will only be realised if river water quality, flood plain lands, and river habitat are also restored or protected. 1.4 Flow Option Packages assessment xvii. The risk categories described in xii. were used to analyse the likelihood that the flow option packages provided by the MDBC project team would deliver a healthy working River Murray System. The summary results of this analysis are outlined in the table below. xv. The key outcomes are that there would be a high probability of achieving a healthy working River Murray System if 4000 GL of new environmental flow allocations were combined with the operational improvements described in options package 57200. The same operational improvements combined with 1950 GL of new environmental flow allocations would lead to a moderate likelihood of achieving a healthy system. xvi. All other packages examined provide little confidence that a healthy river would be achieved in the future. Some localised ecological benefits are delivered by options A & B - for specific wetlands, floodplain forests or river reaches - but the overall system level impact was insufficient to improve the probability category. xvii. Further improvements in river operations beyond those described in options package 57200 may lead to better ecological outcomes for the same volumes of new environmental flows. Further modelling developments and work by the MDBC Project Team would be required to make this determination. This new work should include coupling of hydrological models for the major tributaries to the current River Murray hydrological simulation models, and consideration of environmental outcomes in those tributaries. xviii. None of the flow options packages considered herein provide significant ecological benefits for the Lower Darling River main channel and its adjacent floodplain (i.e. not enough to improve the river health probability category). xxii. No hydrological or hydrodynamic models for the Lower Lakes and Coorong were available to the ERP. This made it very difficult to assess ecological benefits of River Murray environmental flow allocations on these important wetland and estuarine regions. Further work is required to address this shortcoming in knowledge and predictive capability. xix. The full benefits of environmental flow allocations on the health of the river may not become apparent for many years – probably decades. Well designed monitoring programs will be essential to detect ecological response (both short and long term) to a change in the flow regime and the provision of environmental flows. xx. In the short to medium term, the benefits of river management actions are likely to be assessed by performance against hydrological outcomes and indicators. However, we emphasise that hydrological outcomes are only an interim performance indicator and that ecological outcomes and indicators must be used to measure the ultimate effectiveness of river management. xxi. Ecological outcomes of improved river management should be assessed using ecological indicators such as those developed in the Sustainable Rivers Audit, the National River Health Program and the National Land and Water Resources Audit. 1.5 Other river system requirements xxii. A range of structural and operational requirements must be addressed to ensure that the environmental flow option package benefits are realised. Failure to address these recommendations is likely to significantly reduce the ecological

Understanding speech in realistic noisy situations is one of the major complaints of hearing-impaired listeners. Currently, there is no broadly accepted and time-efficient individual measure about the performance in such situations considered within the process of fitting a hearing aid for prescribing [for full text, please go to the a.m. URL]

Pre-registration of hypotheses and power analysis for the project "The role of verb-event structure in early lexical ambiguity resolution" Can 4-year-olds use the event structure of a verb to disambiguate the meaning of a following ambiguous target noun? In this study, we design a psycholinguistic experiment to test whether children can use their knowledge of semantic restrictions that a verb imposes on its argument (i.e., verb-event structure) to understand the meaning of ambiguous words, or whether children are uniquely facilitated by lexical associations (i.e., the fact that certain verb forms are used more often with certain noun meanings). Participants will see 4 images on the screen while hearing a short story. Two images will depict two alternative meanings of an ambiguous noun (e.g., a secondary less frequent meaning: music band; a primary more frequent meaning: elastic band). Two filler images will depict distractors related to the target primary and secondary meaning (respectively). We will manipulate the type of short story heard by participants. Namely, after hearing a prior sentence context which is always lexically biased toward the secondary meaning of a target ambiguous word (e.g., Sophia listened to some music; biased toward the meaning of music band) a child can hear: (Control condition) a second sentence where the main verb-event structure and lexical association point toward the target secondary meaning (e.g., Then, she played in a band); (Lexical condition) a second sentence where the main verb is lexically biased toward the tar-get primary meaning but the verb-event structure is neutral (e.g., Then, she got a band; namely, in child-directed speech the verb get co-occurs more frequently with object (e.g., elastic) band, but getting an object band or getting a music band are both acceptable); (Semantic condition) a second sentence where the main verb-event structure points toward the target primary meaning (e.g., object band) but lexical association is kept neutral (e.g., Then, she twisted a band; in child-directed speech the verb twist does not co-occur with the word band, but an object band is the only referent that can be twisted).

The document attached (powerAnalysis_addendum.pdf) at section "Data collection procedures" completes the following pre-registration: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/FK378 Please read the previous pre-registration to have details about the study.