Hopefully this helps with making the right decisions when designing and maintaining a garden or new landscape.
http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/crisi ... 15x9v.html
Katherine Fenech
September 30, 2010 - 7:06AM
Western Australia will have to increasingly rely on desalination plants as water sources due to the damage done to rivers in the state's South-West, a global study published today has revealed.
The world-first international study into water security pinpointed areas most at risk of falling short of drinkable water in the future. It also examined the threats to rivers and biodiversity.
It paints a grim portrait of the state of the world's river systems, showing nearly 80 per cent of the world's population living in areas where river water is highly threatened, not only degrading access to consumable water but also putting thousands of animals and plants at risk of extinction.
University of Western Australia's Natural Resource Management centre director, Peter Davies, was one of two Australian academics to co-author the paper in conjunction with others from around the world.
He said WA's water supply and consequently the condition of its rivers fell into the same category as the rest of the nation's, where money was being spent on securing drinkable water but not on ensuring biodiversity.
"What we found was about 80 per cent of the rivers around the world were under threat from human activity and while there's been investments made in the Western world in ensuring that human water supply is available, the same investments haven't been made in ensuring biodiversity," Professor Davies said.
He said land clearing had rendered the Swan, Blackwood and Murray rivers useless as water sources because land clearing had turned them into highly saline environments.
"We've damned every river we can in south-western WA for human supply and now our response is to use desalination," he said.
"In some ways it's not such a bad thing because it takes the pressure off rivers."
He said desalination plants were the only way forward because of the staggering $11 billion cost of building a pipeline to source water from the Kimberley.
The report highlighted regions most likely to experience a lack of fresh water in the future as Africa, parts of Europe such as Spain, and Eastern China.
The three-year study was published in the international science journal Nature today.