An early-mid project evaluation of the benefits and costs of the Tragowel Plains Salinity Management Plan estimated the net cost after six years at A$ 5.5 million. The cumulative cash flows for the water transfer, drainage and halophyte programs were all positive with benefit to cost ratios...

An allowance for water use is part of the agronomic analysis implicit in the foundation of any sensible economic evaluation of crop response or change of farming system. Diminishing returns to investment in water use efficiency imply that the optimum level of investment is determined by the...

A false expectation based on the notion that it is easy to raise water use efficiency, and that all increases in water use efficiency will also increase net social welfare, will lead to gross underestimation of the economic impact of reduced irrigation allocations in the Murray-Darling Basin. A...

Water use efficiency data was used to estimate the impact of reducing sales water allocations on a range of irrigated dairy farms categorised according to intensity of water right. The expected deficiency in available water was estimated for each farm category on the basis of historical demand...

Approaches to valuing regional responses in plant productivity from investment in natural resource management are reviewed. The usefulness of data from surveys for estimating marginal physical product is discussed. Since investment reduces declining trends in productivity, an estimate of value...

The Fitzroy basin in central Queensland is the largest basin in the Great Barrier Reef catchment area. The large quantities of sediment and nutrient export are of concern and come predominantly from diffuse sources in the grazing industry. The focus of the research reported in this paper was on...

The aim of this study was to estimate the values to protect the health of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) at the national level and to examine the effects of distance decay on valuation estimates. A split-sample choice-modelling experiment was conducted in six locations: a regional town within the...

Key policy issues relating to protection of the Great Barrier Reef from pollutants generated by agriculture are to identify when measures to improve water quality generate benefits to society that outweigh the costs of reducing pollutants. The research reported in this paper makes a key...

The potential supply of water quality mitigation actions from diffuse sources is difficult to assess, although important for designing policies to encourage such actions. In this paper the design and results of a Choice Modelling(CM) valuation to assess the potential supply of rural mitigation...