Improving the understanding of water availability and use by vegetation of the Lower-Balonne Floodplain. Final research report for the project ‘Watering requirements of floodplain vegetation asset species of the Northern Murray-Darling Basin’.

Floodplain vegetation is an important component of the ecology of the Lower Balonne floodplain system in the northern Murray-Darling Basin. There has been a general, but until now untested, assumption that the dominant vegetation species of the Lower Balonne floodplain also depend on occasional flooding to grow, survive and maintain good plant condition. However, almost all of the knowledge of these requirements, including species-specific tolerances for the maximum period between floods, has been derived from research undertaken in the southern Murray-Darling Basin, in rivers with climatic and hydrological regimes far removed from those of the Lower Balonne region.