CSIRO Land & Water Resources S.

1 total work

Farming Action Catchment Reaction

by R. Hook, etc., J Williams, and H. Gascoigne

Published 1 January 1998

Dryland farming is a major export earner for many temperate-zone countries - southern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. Yet it degrades a country's natural resources. Effects are not restricted to the land - changes in water quality can reduce the potential uses of water and bring about catastrophic changes in both freshwater and coastal ecosystems. This text provides a comprehensive technical overview of the relationships between dryland farming systems and catchment land and water quality in Australia, and integrates it into a whole system framework. It deals with the issues in terms of people, pointers, processes and predictions as it discusses: the social aspects of developing and implementing research to improve dryland farming systems in catchment management programmes; indicators of catchment health; and the processes which determine the impact of the farming action on catchment response. The book concludes by considering the adequacy of our ability to use this process knowledge in models to predict the effect of dryland farming on catchment condition.