"The past is never fully gone. It is absorbed into the present and the future. It stays to shape what we are and what we do."
Sir William Deane, Governor-General of Australia, Inaugural Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture, August 1996.

The Croppers Creek Hydrology Project

A Personal History
Leon Bren (bio)
Overview

The project is located 22 km s-w of Myrtleford and about 6km from the Lake Buffalo Dam wall. Monitoring of three small catchments – Clem, Ella, and Betsy Creeks started in 1975. This involved measurement of streamflow and rainfall. The catchments all carried native eucalypt forest. In December 1979 Clem Creek slopes were cleared. The debris was burnt in April 1980 and the slopes planted with radiata pine. This grew steadily if not spectacularly and the trees were becoming of harvestable size about 2005. An on-site meeting in November of that year discussed this with plans to be formulated in the coming months. However, in January 2006 the area was burnt by the “second megafire” and this destroyed all equipment and the plantation. The equipment was replaced by the University of Melbourne insurance policy, the burnt pines were harvested, and the slopes replanted. Measurement of outflows is continuing. The work was mainly concerned with water and nutrient balances but many other aspects of forest hydrology have been considered. Now read on….

See also:
FCV Bulletin 27