Michelle Dominis

PhD Candidate

Madsen Building (F09), Room 422
Phone: +61 2 9351 7668
Fax: +61 2 9351 3644
Email:

Supervisor
A/Prof Deirdre Dragovich

Research

PhD title: Sensitivity of a Dryland Landscape to Salinity, Eastern Australia.

Salinisation of land and water resources has been at the forefront of environmental policy in Australia for some time. Dryland salinity is one type of salinisation process, and it affects agriculture, landscape processes, biodiversity and infrastructure. Michelle’s PhD investigates the change of dryland salinity at a farming district called Baldry in central west NSW, Australia. Baldry lies within the Macquarie River Basin, which is located within the Darling section of the Murray-Darling Basin. Michelle’s PhD is part of a larger NSW government project titled "Recharge Modelling and Validation”. This larger project examines salinity processes in several priority sub-catchments throughout NSW.

The pattern of salinity change at Baldry was calculated from 1958 to 2004 by using aerial photographs and ArcGIS. The observed pattern will be linked to six influencing factors: climate (for example drought episodes), groundwater, geology, topography, soil types and land use (including vegetation and remediation). Monitoring of groundwater levels and sampling of water, soil and rock samples will help to provide characterisation of salt processes within the study area. If relationships are identified between the influencing factors and salinity they will be examined for scale-dependent traits. It is anticipated that the potential scale-dependence of these relationships will be of most use to land managers and policy makers because a “systems theory” method of analysis will be employed which has not previously been applied to salinity.