News: water policy
Putting people first to improve water-risk assessments
![Paroo River at Eulo, Paroo Shire](/newsroom/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2024-10/paroo-river-at-eulo-paroo-shire-credit-john-robert-mcpherson-wikicommons.jpg?h=f84b0e9f&itok=ov00uOHJ)
Researchers from the University of Adelaide, University of Melbourne, Australian National University and One Basin CRC will pilot a new strategy for assessing the risk climate change poses to water resources.
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Politicisation of water use exacerbates farmers’ distrust
![A Langhorne Creek vineyard](/newsroom/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2024-08/a-langhorne-creek-vineyard-credit-douglas-bardsley-university-of-adelaide.jpg?h=026830cb&itok=zh2ORZ2m)
Researchers have found that in agricultural areas with declining resource availability, climate-adaptation risks increase when discussion about water allocation becomes politicised.
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Blasting the zombie out of water-saving tech
![Zombie crawling image from iStock](/newsroom/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2021-10/zombie-image-istock-photo-by-leolintang-web.jpg?h=deaec4b9&itok=1SGXETKw)
A team of scientists, including experts from the University of Adelaide, suggest that reliance on modern irrigation technologies as a water-use efficiency strategy is a ‘zombie idea’ – one that persists no matter how much evidence is thrown against it.
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Experts refute River Murray estuary claims
![Hume Dam (formally Hume Weir) is the main supply storage and one of the two major headwater storages for the River Murray system.](/newsroom/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2021-03/hume-weir-nsw-istock.jpg?h=2e976bc2&itok=cZmjV3NY)
A team of scientists, led by the University of Adelaide’s Associate Professor John Tibby, has confirmed that the lower River Murray was not an estuary in the mid-Holocene period (more than 7000 years ago) – reinforcing scientific evidence likely to influence important river management policy decisions.
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Water market price rise myth-busting
![Hume Dam (formally Hume Weir) is the main supply storage and one of the two major headwater storages for the River Murray system.](/newsroom/sites/default/files/styles/ua_landscape/public/media/images/2021-03/hume-weir-nsw-istock.jpg?h=2e976bc2&itok=cZmjV3NY)
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have tested claims of water hoarding and speculative behaviour in Murray-Darling Basin water markets and found no evidence of hoarding, or a clear source of speculative behaviour, driving water price rises.