Adapting to climate change: A risk assessment and decision making framework for managing groundwater dependent ecosystems with declining water levels. Supporting document 2: Assessing risks to groundwater dependent wetland ecosystems in a drying climate
Author: Sommer, B., McGuinness, S., Froend, R. and Horwitz, P., 2013
Year: 2013
A risk-analysis and decision-making framework has been developed for predicting risks to groundwater dependent wetland ecosystems in a drying climate. It is intended for specific use in situations where long-term monitoring data is available, and the objectives of the research is to facilitate climate change adaptation and define the risks to ecosystem function. The methodology can be used to spatially represent risk by mapping different climate and landuse scenarios and associated risk. It combines a number of different statistical methods and software options including (but not limited to), Baynesian Belief Network (BBN), Principal Coordinate Analysis, Canonical Analyses of Principal Coordinates, Principal Companent analysis, Distance-Based Redundancy Analyses, Univariate Regression Tree Analysis, Multivariate Regression Tree Analysis. The resulting risk assessment framework methodology was demonstrated on a case study from the Gnangara Groundwater System a groundwater dependent wetland ecosystem which has been under stress from the drying climate, groundwater abstraction and other landuses for over three decades. This paper focuses on the methodology as much as the specific ecosystem.
