Climate change

The Murraylands and Riverland is predicted to have the greatest decline in annual rainfall across the state, combined with an increased time spent in drought. These are significant changes that we acknowledge in our Regional Landscape Plan, and that we are working to address through delivering projects across the 5 priority areas of the plan.

The climate in the Murraylands and Riverland landscape region is already changing and is evident across several aspects of landscape management including:

• Communities and businesses in the region are aware of changes impacting productivity and operations such as pests, weeds, extreme weather and water availability challenges.
• Volunteer groups working in habitat conservation are finding that the window for revegetation is narrowing, and growing seasons are becoming more challenging.
• The fire management season is shortening at both ends and reducing opportunities for controlled burns for regeneration and asset protection.
• Species that were common have become rare or threatened, and other species, native and non-native, have increased and spread in the changing conditions.
• Seasonal weather changes have impacted the whole region, from prolonged dry spells to floods and extreme weather events such as hail or thunderstorms.

About the climate change adaptation plan

The Climate Change Adaptation Plan was developed to guide the region to build resilience to the impacts of climate change. It also aims to ensure that the region is adaptive, sustainable, and continues to be a place where people want to live, visit, invest and conduct business in. The plan is currently under review as part of a new climate strategy development for the landscape board.

Responding to climate change requires both mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation is limiting the amount of greenhouse gases emissions or enhancing carbon sinks or sequestration. Adaptation is about adjusting to the effects of climate change on our landscapes, to plan for or reduce impacts.

Adapting to climate change

By understanding that the effects of climate change are already evident in the region, a key aim of the landscape board’s role is to help communities to improve the resilience of both natural and agricultural landscapes. Through our programs and partnerships we aim to:

• reduce threats to, and improve the condition and connectedness of native vegetation
• minimise the risk posed by pest plants and animals
• reduce the risk and impact of extreme events to help landholders adapt their farming techniques to climate pressures
• increase community participation in activities to build connectivity and resilience such as citizen science events.

Mitigating climate change

The landscape board supports many projects in the region to mitigate or reduce the impacts of greenhouse gases. Encouraging no-till cropping, soil improvements and modification can reduce the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere, while managing the impacts of pest plants and animals is important to support landscape and ecosystem resilience. The landscape board promotes and supports revegetation and planting projects, including blue carbon offsetting, and works to ensure that the organisation internally strives towards carbon neutrality.

Carbon farming is a practice used by landholders to increase the amount of carbon storage on their land by including plantings of native plant species or through improving soil carbon. By retaining more carbon in the landscape, there is less in the atmosphere to contribute to global warming and climate change.

Programs and projects that support climate change adaptation and mitigation are made possible by funding from the levies collected by the Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board as well as funding from the state and federal government, community and industry partnerships.

To find out more about how the Murraylands and Riverland landscape is expected to change, visit the climate science, information and resources pages of the Department for Environment and Water website.

To find out more about the landscape board’s projects and partnerships and to keep up to date with our work, subscribe to our regular e-newsletter The News.