Predicting the water-use of Eucalyptus nitens plantations in ...

• FEMs represent the best available source of information about the plantation
and forest estate, including species, structure, management and growth. The
quality of this information is improving all the time as new data are
incorporated.
• FEMs are optimisation tools that allow a range of scenarios to be assessed
given a host of constraints and they are able to compare the financial
outcomes, wood production, product mix and standing volumes that will result
from various scenarios.
• FEMs can schedule events over long periods to best allow management
objectives to be achieved.
A simple empirical model links E. nitens plantation water-use to plantation basal area. Most
Australian attempts to quantify the effects of plantations on water resources have focussed on
streamflow rather than water-use and none have attempted to link with existing forest
management tools. Forest companies do not manage entire catchments, do not know where
all streams are or how much water is draining from them and do not have the tools or
capacity to operate catchment models for anything other than small-scale studies. This makes
streamflow an impractical basis for planning forest management to benefit water resources.
The National Water Initiative recognises that large-scale plantation forestry may intercept
significant volumes of water, and makes provision for the regulation of large-scale plantation
forestry to reduce the risk to water access entitlements or to achieve environmental
objectives. Forest industry, land managers and regulators are not currently in a position to
quantify large-scale plantation interception in a way that takes account of the variation that
occurs in interception in response to plantation health and growth. Incorporation of water-use
data in FEMs could produce water interception predictions for plantations to inform these
decisions.
37