Forests and Water Production
Not every catchment has a forest but every forest is in a catchment, so any activity in the forest be it road construction, harvesting, grazing, fuel reduction burning or wildfire control needs to take account of the impacts on both water quality and water yield. Prescriptions to ameliorate the impact of most of these activities in native forests (grazing is probably the major exception) were in place for a long time.
In the early 1990s the impacts of harvesting on water production became especially contentious with claims that harvesting would diminish the water flows into the Thompson Reservoir - the largest of Melbourne's water supply reservoirs.
At this stage this article is here mainly to provide a link to some articles on this topic, but we hope to expand it, together with access to the related knowledge base, over time.
Forest Harvesting & the Thompson Catchment
Croppers Creek - an Overview
Croppers Creek - a Personal View