The Lower Shoalhaven Catchment Management Committee (LSCMC) has been
developing a cumulative impact monitoring program for Jervis Bay.
What is cumulative impact monitoring?
Total Catchment Management (TCM) is about balancing resource use and conservation.
Achieving the balance requires an understanding of the effects of all the
uses of the environment within a catchment because it's the combination
of activities - or the "cumulative impact" - that determines the
environmental quality of the catchment.
Usually when environmental assessment is conducted, it focuses on a specific
activity or development; and we test for what impact that activity is having
in the particular area and at a particular time.
But we do not know the combined effect of activities throughout the catchment
and how - over time - these activities have changed or are changing the
natural environment. This is what cumulative impact monitoring is designed
to measure.
We usually focus on environmental problems when they start to disrupt human
activities (blue green algae/use of water; salinity/farming; air pollution
/our capacity to breath). The problem with this is that human activities
are usually affected by environmental changes only after the natural system
has been significantly degraded. A lack of information can lead to overuse
and it can also lead to unnecessarily or ineffectively excluding some human
activities. This is management in the face of uncertainty.
What we want to do is trace the status of the natural environment - the
natural impacts on it and our impacts - in order to adjust our management
before irreversible change occurs.
What will the project involve?
The program will involve monitoring in 3 areas:
1. inputs (effluent discharge, nutrient and sediment run-off with stormwater)
2. water quality
3. indicator species which show how the ecology of the system is responding
to the water quality
Sounds like a big project - who will do this?
The project involves government agencies at all levels (local, state and
Commonwealth). It also involves community groups. For example:
What are the outcomes?
This year the LSCMC received $50,000 from Environment Australia (previously
DEST) primarily to provide the project with scientific and technical support.
Funding to employ a part-time Project Officer has been granted from the
National Landcare Program for one year (starting May 1997) and the application
has been made to the Natural Heritage Trust to continue this position for
two more years.
At this point we are working on the initial monitoring design. The first
of the community monitoring workshops will be run later this year.
For further information on this project contact: Sandy Fritz, Co-ordinator,
LSCMC
Phone 44293539