3.5.1 Overview

This section describes the ecological, economic and sociocultural assets that are potentially impacted by hydrological changes due to additional coal resource development. Assets were nominated by the community for the Bioregional Assessment Programme, where each asset is an entity having value or many values associated with it. A water-dependent asset is an asset that is potentially impacted, either positively or negatively, by changes to the groundwater and/or surface water regime due to coal resource development. The water-dependent asset register is a list of assets associated with a bioregion or subregion.

The water dependence of each asset was assessed individually. In many cases, assets were clearly water dependent, such as groundwater bores, rivers and wetlands. In other cases, the water dependency of assets – such as the potential habitat of threatened species, ecological communities and regional ecosystems – was less clear. The Assessment team reviewed the available ecological knowledge and used spatial overlay to determine their water dependency. The water dependency of other assets – such as national parks, nature reserves or historical buildings – was assessed based on the presence of floodplains, wetlands or surface water features, shallow groundwater or other water-dependent assets within their spatial boundaries.

The water-dependent asset register for the Maranoa-Balonne-Condamine subregion (dated 26 June 2015; Mitchell et al., 2015a; Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 1) described in companion product 1.3 (Mitchell et al., 2015b) was updated after product 1.3 was finalised. A review of the ecological knowledge used to determine the nature of the water dependency of the potential habitat of threatened species and communities identified an additional 17 ecological assets that were added to the water-dependent asset register for the Maranoa-Balonne-Condamine subregion. Consultation with Traditional Owners in the Maranoa-Balonne-Condamine subregion identified an additional 56 Indigenous assets that were considered to be water dependent. These additional assets have been added to an updated version of the water-dependent asset register (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 2; Bioregional Assessment Programme, 2017).

The impact and risk analysis used this updated water-dependent asset register (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 2; Bioregional Assessment Programme, 2017), which contains a total of 2660 water-dependent assets that comprise 2215 ecological assets, 310 economic assets and 135 sociocultural assets.

Users can explore further details about assets, including their spatial extents, using a map-based interface on the BA Explorer at www.bioregionalassessments.gov.au/explorer/MBC/assets.

Last updated:
30 October 2018
Thumbnail of the Maranoa-Baloone-Condamine subregion

Product Finalisation date

2017
PRODUCT CONTENTS