Abstract
Study region: Tropical Australia.
Study focus: Streams and rivers of the Australian tropics have been the subject of substantial hydrological process research spanning the last 50 years. In this review, we highlight initial efforts to understand the hydrological response of forested ecosystems in the humid tropics, and how this has been more recently followed by work in savannas of the seasonal tropics. We describe recent findings from modelling and tracer studies and derive a framework of dominant hydrological processes for the region. We also detail five critical knowledge gaps that will require further attention with climate change and ongoing interest in development in the region.
New hydrological insights for the region: We outline the diversity of runoff generation mechanisms that prevail in the region and emphasise the role of connected wetlands and floodplains in catchment response. We discuss the prominence of focused, episodic recharge in the replenishment of groundwater stores across the region. We also review how climate change and potential water resource development projects may alter the hydrology of northern Australian catchments. Future research should focus on improving our physical understanding of key hydrological processes, as well as anticipate the likely effects of development and climate change on these processes. Intensive and long-term studies of experimental observatories, which capture the diversity in landscapes and climates of the region, will help frame sustainable water development policies in northern Australia.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 101194 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-17 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies |
| Volume | 43 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:A massive thanks to Dr Cuan Petheram for his particularly thorough and thought-provoking reviews of earlier versions of this work, which have led to a considerably improved manuscript. Our thanks also go to Prof Christian Birkel, Dr Alicia Correa and Prof Peter Cook for thoughtful comments on an early version of the paper. We acknowledge the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australian state governments for maintaining a network of gauging stations across the Australian tropics and making data openly accessible. Lastly, we are grateful to the other reviewers and Editor for their useful feedback. CD is supported by the Australian Research Council ( DE220100852 ). This work was partly funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors
