Please choose a Metric:
Rainfall received
Units
Example target
Example methods / guidance / references
What are tiers?
Tier 1
Estimate using own judgement and observations
Tier 2
Estimate using third-party professional estimates or public data
Tier 3
Model or measure based on site-specific surveys/sampling, remote or in-field sensing, laboratory analysis, etc.
Example data sources
Internal records
Third-party data sources
Maps of Australian precipitation data are available at the Bureau of Meteorology – Maps and gridded spatial data.
Site-specific measurements or model outputs
Data on Australian climate variables from 1889 to the present in point and grid form are available at Long Paddock – SILO (Scientific Information for Land Owners)
Notes
The relevant target and time period for rainfall received will depend on the production system, target productivity level and climate, e.g. sheep production in south-western Australia is generally thought to require 250mm of annual rainfall plus 25mm per 1.3 DSE/ha. Some production systems may depend mainly on long-term average annual rainfall (e.g. forestry) whereas a fruit orchard might require a certain minimum amount of water during the fruiting season in order to achieve target fruit production, and a different minimum amount of water during the rest of the year to maintain tree condition. Similarly, a crop or pasture might depend on rainfall not exceeding certain levels which can lead to waterlogging, pugging or compaction, or high-intensity events which lead to soil erosion. Reliability of rainfall may be important over various different timescales, and can be measured in different ways – e.g. the Australian Bureau of Meteorology uses an index of rainfall variability which is defined as the 90th rainfall percentile minus the 10th percentile, divided by the 50th percentile (see Rainfall variability maps). Different metrics could be used to measure each of these dependencies, while all broadly being based on similar methods and data.
Units
Example target
Example methods / guidance / references
What are tiers?
Tier 1
Estimate using own judgement and observations
Tier 2
Estimate using third-party professional estimates or public data
Tier 3
Model or measure based on site-specific surveys/sampling, remote or in-field sensing, laboratory analysis, etc.
Example data sources
Internal records
Third-party data sources
Maps of Australian historical and forecast root zone soil moisture are available at the Bureau of Meteorology – Australian Water Outlook.
Site-specific measurements or model outputs
Data on Australian historical and forecast root zone soil moisture are available at the Bureau of Meteorology – Australian Water Outlook.
Notes
The relevant target and time period for root zone soil moisture will depend on the production system, target productivity level and climate.
Units
Example target
Example methods / guidance / references
What are tiers?
Tier 1
Estimate using own judgement and observations
Tier 2
Estimate using third-party professional estimates or public data
Tier 3
Model or measure based on site-specific surveys/sampling, remote or in-field sensing, laboratory analysis, etc.
Example data sources
Internal records
Third-party data sources
For example, data on water rights in Queensland are available at Queensland Government Open Data Portal – Water entitlements and in Victoria at Victorian Water Register – Entitlement statistics. Note that water rights may be called different things in different jurisdictions – see ‘What are nationally equivalent terms for water products?’ at the Bureau of Meteorology – About water markets.
Site-specific measurements or model outputs
Notes
The relevant target for water rights will depend on the production system, target productivity level and climate, but should reflect the rights required to ensure that the chance of failing to meet target production due to being allocated insufficient water is acceptably low, over a relevant time period. This may include defining the level of security required and type of tenure, as well as the required volume.
Luke (1987) provides lookup tables for average daily water consumption requirements per DSE in different parts of Australia. However, these figures do not include losses.