Professor

Phone: +61 (0)2 612 50660
Fax: + 61 (0)2 6125 0746
E-mail: Ian.White@anu.edu.au

Professional Activities

Ian's major research area is the sustainable, integrated management of water and related land resources with emphasis on catchments and groundwater systems, particularly in coastal small island situations and research interests in the prediction and measurement of the downstream impacts of climate and land use change on the availability and quality of surface and groundwater. He has expertise in rainfall infiltration, modelling saturated/unsaturated flow, acidification of coastal and inland streams, salinisation of streams, impacts of water quality on ecology, sustainability of water extraction from shallow groundwater systems in coastal areas, safeguarding urban water supplies and hydrology and water management in small islands and coastal floodplains, vulnerability and adaptation to global change

Academic Highlights

Our book on Inter-Basin Water Transfer examines inter-basin water transfer projects in countries with the diverse geographical, climatic, economic, and policy regimes in Australia, United States, Canada, China and India, countries. The first part of the book explores the challenges in water resources and discusses the key issues in inter-basin transfers. The second part examines water resources of Australia, the driest inhabited continent. The third part explores inter-basin transfer projects in the United States, Canada, China and India, examining their benefits and impacts within these nations' contrasting economies and governance systems. The book concludes by highlighting the successes and failures of the cases examined, and provides pointers for the future of inter-basin transfer in meeting the world's urgent and growing water demands.

Our team research on the impacts of Canberra's devastating 2003 bushfires on the Cotter water supply catchment found surprisingly there was that there were no significant changes in annual upper catchment water yield following both the 1983 and 2003 fires. The 2003 fires caused unprecedented increases in turbidity, iron and manganese, by up to thirty times previous events in the upper catchment storages. These increases caused disruptions to water supply and resulted in the construction of a major water filtration plant to address turbidity and other water quality problems. While natural revegetation in the upper Cotter has lead to rapid improvements in water quality within 18 months, the area of former pine plantations in the lower Cotter continues as a major sediment source.

Our integrated research on managing acid discharges in estuarine areas in eastern Australia has involved researchers, farmers, state and local government participates and has resulted in mandatory best management practices for the NSW Sugarcane Industry and helped lead to the National Strategy on the Management of acid sulfate soils.

Selected Publications

Ghassemi, F. and White, I. (2006). Inter-Basin Water Transfer: Case Studies from Australia, United States, Canada, China and India. Cambridge University Press. UNESCO IHP International Series on Hydrology.

White I, Wade A, Worthy M, Mueller N, Daniell T, Wasson R. (2006). The vulnerability of water supply catchments to bushfires: Impacts of the January 2003 wildfires on the Australian Capital Territory. Australian Journal of Water Resources 10 (2), 179-193.

White I, Falkland AJ, Perez P, Dray A , Metutera T, Metai E, Overmars M (2007) Challenges in freshwater management in low coral atolls. Journal of Cleaner Production, 15, 1522-1528. (available on line 13 October 2006).

White I, Melville MD, Macdonald BCT, Quirk RG, Robert Hawken R, Tunks M, Buckley D, Beattie R, Williams J Heath L (2007). From conflicts to wise practice agreement: Cooperative learning and coastal stewardship in estuarine floodplain management, Tweed River, eastern Australia. Journal of Cleaner Production 15, 1545-1558. (available on line 13 October 2006).