Aridflo is an ambitious project looking at the relationship between flow patterns in the rivers of the Lake Eyre Basin and the biological responses of aquatic life, from fish and water-birds to zooplankton and algae.

The project has been running since the beginning of 2000 and is funded by the Natural Heritage Trust from the Environmental Flows initiative of Environment Australia. It is run by the South Australian Department for Water Resources in partnership with the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency, Parks and Wildlife Service, and Department of Natural Resources and Mines.

According to the project’s initial chief investigator, Jim Puckridge, a researcher with the Department of Environmental Biology at the University of Adelaide, it has been well worth it.

“We’ve had to try and cover a huge range of biological communities,” he says, “which has been an unusual feature of the project and an expensive one as well.

“Getting all that expertise into the field, month after month has not been cheap but it’s certainly been necessary - basically the information hasn’t existed for any of the river systems in the Lake Eyre Basin. For river systems that cover such a large portion of the continent, it’s astounding how little we know.”

The fieldwork stage of Aridflo has finished and the final stage of data collation and analysis, and hydrological modelling is nearing completion. The ultimate aim is to produce a model that can assist managers of the river to determine what environmental outcomes might occur for different water uses.

Right from the outset, Aridflo has recognized and made use of records and knowledge of local land managers regarding river flows and the responses to them. We’re very conscious of the wealth of local knowledge,” says Puckridge. It’s a very big source of information.

“And I think there’s a lot in this project for the pastoral community - we’ve created this huge database of biological and hydrological information that can be related right down to property and individual water-body level.”

To get the information out to the people who will use it, Aridflo has begun producing a series of information sheets for pastoralists on the characteristics of the rivers that run through their properties.

Jim Puckridge says the project has provided a dramatic leap in the level of knowledge on the rivers of the Lake Eyre Basin. I think everyone involved has been stunned by how biologically rich these rivers are.”