Australia-France Workshop on freshwater monitoring in semi-arid regions

Freshwater quality and quantity is a pressing issue as human population impacts the Earth’s environment and climate systems. The ability to maintain extensive monitoring networks for episodic blue-green algal and suspended sediment events is an enormous challenge.

This proposed small workshop will bring together expertise across both CSIRO’s Aquatic Remote Sensing team and the GET Hydro-Biogeochemistry of the Critical Zone team to explore complementarities, and to scope a pathway for future collaboration. These two teams have been exploring combinations of low-cost near surface and satellite sensing approaches. Their expertise spans the bio-optical properties of inland water ecosystems, satellite algorithm development, water quality and its impacts on human health. 

This workshop will allow the two teams to joint forces in better understanding water pathways, workflows, and quality issues in semi-arid regions and their links to human health across the developed and developing world. Future fieldwork, publication, proposal for further funding to pilot and scale up the activities of this new collaboration, as well as a Memorandum of Understanding between GET and CSIRO, will also be discussed.