Modelling lets us take detailed knowledge and extend it so it’s relevant to the spatial and temporal scales at which management decisions need to be made – ultimately the whole of the Murray–Darling Basin.
Most managers and scientists rely on their own perceptions and experience when making decisions about environmental watering – we term this their ‘mental model’. These mental models provide individuals with expectations about how an ecosystem would respond to environmental watering, and what the risks and benefits might be. Different managers may, however, have different mental models. It can be difficult to identify cause-and-effect pathways, as the accuracy of mental models is difficult to assess. Mental models also leave an organisation when individuals move on.
Using models can make knowledge transparent, so that it’s transferrable in space and time, and clearly identifies and reduces individual bias. Cause-and-effect pathways can be tested and used in adaptive management to improve both knowledge and management practice. This means that models provide an objective and repeatable assessment of the likely impact of a given management action, like environmental watering.
Models also provide us with the opportunity to run ‘what-if’ scenarios so that we can improve our understanding of the ecological response of the Basin to environmental watering, for example, the ecological response of different parts of the Basin to water for the environment under different climate scenarios.