Perceptions of a salinity ‘crisis’ in Australia around 2000 resulted in the establishment of a major national program that aimed to prevent, stabilize, and reverse trends in salinity. The National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality allocated A$1.4 billion of public funds to 1700...

Lifestyle landowners value land for its amenities and ecological characteristics and could play an important role in managing and conserving native vegetation in multifunctional rural landscapes. We quantify values of ecosystem services captured by owners of rural lifestyle properties in...

Medic (Medicago spp.) pastures are widely grown in rotation with dryland cereal crops in Mediterranean climate zones of Australia. Attempts since the 1960's to introduce this system to Mediterranean west Asia and north Africa (the native region of medic) have not lead to significant adoption;...

Dryland salinity is one of the most pressing land management problems in Western Australia. A number of projects are in progress to provide a more comprehensive picture of the location and extent of potentially saline areas in the landscape. Associated with some of these projects, a large number...

Dryland salinity has been conceived of as a problem involving massive off-site impacts and therefore requiring coordinated action to ensure that land managers reduce those off-site impacts. In economic terms, salinity is seen as a problem of market failure due to externalities, including...

Hydrologists predict that salinity in the agricultural region of Western Australia will eventually affect an average of 30 percent of the landscape if nothing is done to reduce current levels of recharge. The scale of tree planting and other works thought to be required for controlling salinity...

There is a wide variety of approaches to whole farm models (WFMs) including purely biophysical models as well as models that combine biological and financial elements. Our study was motivated by the notion that researchers may benefit from guidelines on the choices they must make about modelling...

There has been increased public demand for environment protection, including in rural areas. Government programs and policies have responded to these demands in various ways, such as by attempting to increase farmer awareness of environmental issues, increasing budgets for rural environmental...

A changing agricultural extension environment has seen the private sector in Australia assuming an increased responsibility for the delivery of agricultural information to farmers. This paper is a "work in progress" report of a project being undertaken, with RIRDC funding, to document the public...