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Integrating economic and ecological modelling in the Great Barrier Reef catchments

ALEXANDER SMAJGL & PETER C. GEHRKE

1 CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Townsville, Australia

alex.smajgl@csiro.au

2 CSIRO Land and Water, Indooroopilly, Australia

Abstract The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area faces threats from terrestrial runoff and climate change. The Reef Water Quality Protection Plan defined a political mandate by the Australian and Queensland governments to stop or reverse the decline in water quality entering the GBR lagoon by 2013. This paper documents modelling work which aims to support policy decisions that target water quality improvements. Integrated policy impact assessment models can operate on different scales, from catchments to farm scale. The term integration is used here to describe a quantitatively linking of bio-physical and socio-economic models in order to simulate the implications of incentive changes for land and water management along the coastal regions adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef. This paper demonstrates how for the purpose of disciplinary integration ecological food-web modelling is integrated in a general equilibrium model. Additionally to this methodological dimension a broader modelling framework is explained for a multi-scale impact assessment.

Key words water management; integrated assessment; CGE and agent-based models