I’ve just returned from a week in New Zealand working with the Waikato River Authority (WRA) and partner organisations, including Dairy NZ and the Waikato Regional Council, exploring the application of INFFER to project prioritisation to the Waipa catchment, one of a number of major sub-regions for the Waikato. Like many other environmental organisations the WRA […]
Posted 15 June 2015 in News
We are pleased to welcome back Anna Roberts to Australia and she has now started working full-time with Natural Decisions. Anna has been based in the United States working in Annapolis Maryland where she led the re-structuring and transition of a not-for-profit science-based company in the Chesapeake Bay Chesapeake Bay region. Anna is now leading […]
Posted 14 May 2015 in News
Since launching Natural Decisions in July 2013 we have worked extensively on water quality projects concerning the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland. Firstly with the Burnett-Mary Regional Group, coordinating their Water Quality Improvement Plan (WQIP), and then with Terrain NRM providing supporting work involving INFFER for the Wet Tropics WQIP. Both of these projects have […]
Posted 12 May 2015 in News
In recent months Natural Decisions has been working with a number of Victorian CMAs; East Gippsland, North Central and West Gippsland, to assist with their development of regional climate change adaptation and mitigation plans. A fascinating aspect of this work has been applying what is known as an ‘Adaptation Pathways’ approach. Given the uncertainty around […]
Posted 21 March 2015 in News
Natural Decisions colleague, Anna Roberts, together with Robin Kundis Craig (William H. Leary Professor of Law at the University of Utah) have just had published a new paper that presents a comparative law view of nonpoint source/diffuse source water pollution issues in the US and Australia. Titled “When Will Governments Regulate Nonpoint Source Pollution? A […]
Posted 30 January 2015 in News
Recently I participated in an interesting workshop in Canberra, organised to discuss the effectiveness of agri-environment schemes in delivering conservation outcomes in Australia. ‘Paying farmers for biodiversity – agri-environment schemes in Australia’ involved ecologists, economists, managers and policy-makers from around the country, and was organised by three early career researchers, Fiona Gibson (UWA) together with David […]
Posted 20 December 2014 in News
Over recent weeks Natural Decisions, together with Scarlet Consulting, has been discussing climate change and climate variability with people across North Central Victoria. This work is part of assisting the North Central CMA to develop a Carbon Action Plan for north-central Victoria, with funding from the Australian Government. To inform this plan the North Central […]
Posted 24 November 2014 in News
The latest edition of Decision Point, the monthly magazine of the Environmental Decisions Group (EDG), has a series of articles on environmental decision making. Two of these focus on matters associated with decision metrics and investment evaluation. The first, by Fiona Gibson and David Pannell, focuses on the importance of using robust decision metrics to underpin sound […]
Posted 15 September 2014 in News
Over recent months we have been working with Spatial Vision to examine the potential impacts of climate change across seven Victorian CMA regions. Together we developed a novel, rigorous and transparent method of vulnerability assessment that has generated spatial views of exposure, sensitivity, potential impact, adaptive capacity and vulnerability for a range of NRM assets. The […]
Posted 6 August 2014 in News
The last 12 months has been somewhat of a whirlwind for our fledgling business. We’ve had the opportunity to work on fascinating projects, with terrific organisations, and met a bunch of knowledgeable and passionate people. We’re on a steep learning curve but it’s been most enjoyable so far! Since we started, on the 1st July […]
Posted 14 July 2014 in News
Natural Decisions recently completed a project to better protect the Barham water supply catchment. The work was conducted in partnership with Naturallogic (http://naturallogic.org) and Water Futures (https://waterfutures.net.au). The Barham catchment, in the southern Victorian Otways region, supplies drinking water to the communities of Apollo Bay, Marengo and Skenes Creek, and surrounding rural settlements. A participatory […]
In 2020 Natural Decisions has been pleased to work with Kilter Rural in support of their work to develop environmental accounts for their properties in northern Victoria. We have a long and productive collaboration with Kilter Rural, which extends back to 2004 when they first established their FFL Winlaton farmlands near Lake Boga. On 9000 […]
Higher summer temperatures and greater frequency of extreme temperature events are major climate change related threats in the Mallee. A project, funded by DELWP, Agriculture Victoria and the Mallee CMA, was developed to model yield impacts on irrigated horticulture crops (citrus, grapes and almonds) under current and future (2030, 2050 and 2070) climate scenarios and […]
Anna Roberts and Geoff Park have led a major project with the North East Catchment Management Authority (CMA) in partnership with Spatial Vision, Bridge Logic and Meridian Agriculture. The work was funded by the Australian Government through the National Landcare Program and forms the basis of a multi-year project to help agricultural industries, local government […]
INFFER benefit:cost analysis for Melbourne’s water supply catchments Natural Decisions is leading work with Melbourne Water to protect critical water supply catchments through addressing threats from bushfires and a range of other threats (human, pest animals and agriculture). We have used a participatory approach, latest science, development of an innovative approach to quantify bushfire risk […]