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| About the River Catchment Water Quality InitiativeUnder a funding Agreement with the Tasmanian Government, the Australian Government provided over $1 million to meet the objectives of the Tasmanian River Catchment Water Quality Initiative. This two-and-a-half year Initiative is part of the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement (TCFA), jointly managed by the Australian Government's Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities and the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (DPIPWE).
The Australian Government established a Community Consultative Committee, which operated as an adjunct to the Initiative to ensure there was a broad range of community involvement with the Initiative.
The overall objective of the Initiative was to contribute to the assessment of pesticide use on water quality in Tasmania’s river catchments. In meeting this objective, the Initiative was designed around four separate components or projects, which are all described in separate reports available below.
Since January 2005 the baseline and flood-monitoring program has been in place. This program monitors for pesticides in Tasmanian waterways. As a starting point, enhancements to this program will be informed through a suite of target pesticides identified in the Initiative's Pesticide Usage project. The pesticide monitoring program will be further enhanced by utilising PIRI-Tas.
This research project, managed by DPIPWE, determined the nature and extent of agricultural and forestry chemical pesticide usage in Tasmanian river catchments. The results described in the report were used to inform the CSIRO’s Pesticide Impact Rating Index (PIRI) pesticide database, and will assist to enhance pesticide water monitoring programs in Tasmania.
CSIRO Land and Water, Adelaide, managed this project to tailor PIRI to Tasmanian conditions and validate its use in predicting the relative risk of off-site migration of pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides and fungicides) in the Tasmanian environment.
PIRI was first developed by CSIRO and is currently being used both nationally and internationally by a number of organisations.
This research project, undertaken by Forestry Tasmania, Division of Research and Development, was to analyse historical water quality monitoring data relative to prevailing environmental conditions.
The research identified links between off-site movement of pesticides and factors such as: - vegetation cover
- landscape (soil, slopes, buffer strips)
- climatic conditions (rainfall events, soil dryness index)
- methods of pesticide application (broad-acre, point, aerial, ground based).
The results were used to adapt CSIRO's PIRI to Tasmanian conditions; i.e. the fully customised PIRI-Tas software tool.
The Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA) undertook this research project. TIA conducted field and laboratory studies on the behaviour of pesticides in Tasmanian soils and environmental conditions. The results were also used to develop PIRI-Tas.
For further information or a hard copy of any these reports:
Contact: Tasmanian River Catchment Water Quality InitiativeKate Wilson
Project Manager (Pesticide Water Monitoring)
13 St Johns Avenue NEW TOWN TAS 7008
Phone: 03 6233 3094
Fax: 03 6233 6881
Email: Kate.Wilson@dpipwe.tas.gov.au
Department switchboard: 1300 368 505 (local call cost within Australia)
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