PhD Scholar
Managing N losses in rural landscapes
The use of spatial information and risk management frameworks in balancing production and conservation: a dairy case study
E-mail: patricia.hill@csiro.au

A modified framework for reducing nitrogen pollution from farms is proposed which aims to bridge the gap between on-farm action and off-farm environmental response. The framework (referred to in the thesis as the Nitrogen Loss Management Framework, or the NLM Framework) was designed to utilise readily available data, and was developed to address some of the problems associated with using complex numerical models for modelling nitrogen fluxes in diverse catchments. The framework is a compartmentalised risk management approach, whereby the consequences and likelihood of N loss are determined separately, and then combined to predict the relative risk of nitrogen loss across the farm. It was demonstrated that the potential consequences of N loss could be determined using published information on specific environmental assets. The likelihood of loss, which is difficult to measure and complex to model, could be estimated by combining the potential for N to be transported offsite with the load of N available for loss. Demonstration of the approach to a case-study farm showed that significant environmental and economic benefits may be obtained through better-informed, spatially explicit nitrogen management at the sub-farm scale.