Gayini Trusted Environmental Data & Information Supply Chain

Who will benefit

Indigenous land and water managers, ecological researchers, government water and land management agencies.

Program

Trusted Environmental Data and Information Supply Chains

Thematic research data commons is: Planet

The Challenge

Gayini is 85,000 hectares of complex, dynamic and interconnected ecosystems in the Murrumbidgee catchment in south west NSW.. It is one of the largest wetland restoration projects in Australia, involving a range of non-government and government organisations.

Gayini is owned by the Nari Nari Tribal Council, an Aboriginal not-for-profit organisation that manages Gayini, with a consortium of partners including Murray Darling Wetlands Working Group, The Nature Conservancy Australia, and the UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science. The consortium aims to protect and restore the landscape’s land and water values and Aboriginal Cultural Heritage values, and create sustainable economic value.

Gayini faces a complex web of challenges, and there are a range of government and non-government organisations collecting data over the land and water for research and decision-making purposes. River management pressures like water extraction, pollution, and invasive species threaten the health of the ecosystems. The impacts of livestock grazing, floods, fires and a changing climate also need to be understood. There are commitments to environmental flow management and sustainable grazing practices.

Strategic management requires navigating diverse interests, incorporating Indigenous Knowledge, and addressing data-sharing issues. The lack of clarity regarding who is collecting data in the region, data accessibility and the challenge of integrating data from various sources hinders comprehensive understanding and informed decision-making in managing land and water resources.

The Response

A trusted environmental data and information supply chain for Gayini will enable a partnership between regional parties that brings together existing data from diverse sources to provide a comprehensive regional overview of data collection efforts and the availability of trusted data, models and information products.

This project will develop enduring infrastructure that enables discovery, access and reuse of trusted data across multiple providers for management, decision making and environmental research.

The Gayini data and information supply chain will comprise the following outputs, which will be capable of generic application to other landscapes:

a governance and business model for the long-term operation of the infrastructure
a data governance framework that allows for data and model sharing between all involved organisations, with appropriate access controls
a documented data publishing pipeline that covers agreed best practices for trusted data and information supply chains (data, metadata, vocabularies, data exchange, quality, provenance, and trusted repositories)
a federated technical infrastructure that provides:
- a discovery layer that enables access to relevant data and models from distributed sources, with appropriate access controls
- visualisation of spatio-temporal data
- reporting applications
- connections to existing analysis and modelling infrastructure
training of data providers and end-users.

The ARDC will invest $1 million to establish data governance, data integration and visualisation infrastructure to support the needs of managers and researchers of Gayini. This project is part of the ARDC Planet Research Data Commons’ Trusted Environmental Data and Information Supply Chains focus area.

Who Will Benefit

Gayini is a regional use case that aligns with national and international priorities – it is an area of national and international significance, providing habitat and breeding grounds for waterbirds, including migratory species listed under international agreements, rare and endangered frogs and birds, as well as threatened plants. The environmental values are under threat from multiple pressures including feral animals, grazing, water extraction, and renewable energy development.

Effective management of the complex, dynamic and interconnected ecosystems requires multidisciplinary research, across ecology, hydrology, and climate science.

Research

For researchers, the benefits are huge, both in accessing valuable data, and in contributing directly to improving environmental outcomes. Gayini provides habitat and breeding grounds for waterbirds, including migratory species listed under international agreements, rare and endangered frogs and birds, as well as threatened plants. A regional view allows researchers to easily see what data and models exist for a region and where the gaps are, so they can see how their research can contribute to completing the picture for Gayini.

Government

The trusted environmental data and information supply chain for Gayini will be created in partnership with experts in that region who will collectively determine what constitutes trustworthy data and analytics. Governments are investing in the collection of data (e.g. fisheries, environment) and management of resources (e.g. grazing and environmental flows). Government regulators will have access to the best data and models available so they can make faster and more accurate decisions on the cumulative impacts of developments, as well as reporting management progress.

Management of Country

The managers of Gayini will have streamlined access to scientific data so it can be combined or interpreted alongside Cultural Knowledge to enable timely, evidence-based decisions on management practices and reporting.

Program Design and Consultation

The ARDC is working with interested regional parties in research, government and non-government organisation sectors to codesign the project, ensuring the needs of all interested regional parties are met.

This includes the Nari Nari Tribal Council, an Aboriginal-led not-for-profit organisation, which manages Gayini with a consortium of partners including Murray Darling Wetlands Working Group, The Nature Conservancy Australia and the UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science, with the aim of protecting and restoring the landscape and Cultural Heritage values, and creating sustainable economic value. A Strategic Adaptive Management (SAM) Plan has been developed to guide activities over the next 10 years.

We are following the co-design process described in the Planet Research Data Commons Co-Design Framework. The ARDC has completed the Problem Identification phase over several years of extensive consultation and information-gathering activities. We are now in the Project Shaping phase where we are holding workshops and discussions with interested parties.

A co-design workshop was held online on 25 June 2024, with 39 participants representing the majority of research, government and non-governmental organisations with interest in environmental outcomes for Gayini, either as data generators, users or related data service providers. The main data challenges identified by the partners included:

Providing streamlined access to scientific data so it can easily be combined or interpreted alongside Cultural Knowledge and Indigenous Data, particularly in the areas of cultural burning, environmental flows and flooding regimes, conservation grazing, and management of bush resources (traditional food and bush medicines)
Understanding ecosystem changes and drivers (over time and space)
Access to timely, fit-for-purpose data for decision-making and reporting

An overview of the proposed project to create a trusted environmental data and information supply chain for Gayini is now open for community consultation until 20 September 2024 – view the Gayini proposed project overview. You are invited to provide feedback via email to [email protected].

If you would like to be involved in further co-design activities for this project or to receive updates, please register your interest using the form below.

Target Outcomes

A trusted environmental data and information supply chain for Gayini will enable a partnership between relevant regional parties that brings together existing data from diverse sources effectively for the realisation of the 2023 Strategic Adaptive Management Framework vision for Gayini.

It will provide a comprehensive regional view of data collection efforts and the availability of trusted data, models and information products, enabling more efficient and effective research into regional ecosystem processes, management effectiveness, environmental impacts and trends.

Potential research use cases include:

monitoring of vegetation condition and understanding the impacts of livestock grazing regimes and their interaction with floods, fires and climate to assess conservation management outcomes and inform adaptive management strategies.
understanding fish, frog and waterbird seasonal abundance across Gayini, and the impact of factors including native and invasive species, flooding regimes, including environmental flow management, and water infrastructure.
designing informative indicators to monitor ecosystem condition trends.

The Nari Nari Tribal Council and consortium members will be supported to manage the lands and waters of Gayini effectively through data-driven decision support and streamlined reporting tools. Metadata will support the evaluation of data and models as accessible, fit-for-purpose, trustworthy, and reusable by clearly describing the rights of data owners, the provenance of data and information products, and the context around the data.