Priority Zero is a free weekly webinar series targeted at volunteer firefighters, which will run up until the start of the fire season. Presentations will be aligned with one (or more) of seven themes: health & well-being, volunteering, leadership, climate change, fire behaviour, operations, and technology.

Webinar #2

Anticipated impacts of climate change on water availability and bushfires — the view from the Murray–Darling Basin - Matt Coleman (Murray-Darling Basin Authority)

Climate change is having a range of impacts across the Murray–Darling Basin. Over the past 20 years we have seen the effects of a hotter climate, decreased rainfall, and more extreme climatic events — both flood and drought. The future is uncertain, but we expect there to be an increased demand from water users on a diminishing resource, and we also expect droughts will become more severe with more periods of low-to-zero river flow and low water availability. We also expect the changing pattern of bushfires will impact the quality of water available, impacting critical water needs of communities.

In this presentation I will discuss how we currently manage water across the Murray–Darling Basin, and I will describe the challenges which have emerged over recent years and those we anticipate in coming decades due to a changing climate.

Speaker bio

Matt Coleman is head of Science Acquisition at the Murray–Darling Basin Authority (MBDA). He has worked at the MDBA for 14 years, working in analytics for hydrology, climate, and the social-economic-environmental sciences. Matt is particularly interested in the application of science for government policy.

Prior to working at the MDBA, Matt worked in the field of astrophysics, with a PhD from ANU and 4 years overseas working at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (Germany) and the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (Boston).