Dr Will Higgisson
University of Canberra | Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Water Science (CAWS)
Will Higgisson is a vegetation ecologist specialising in the research and management of riverine and floodplain ecosystems, with a focus on dryland regions. As the Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Water Science (CAWS) at the University of Canberra, he leads research and monitoring programs that improve our understanding of how terrestrial and aquatic systems, communities and species, respond to environmental change, human management, and climate change.
Dr. Higgisson currently leads the Flow-MER Program in the Lachlan River, western New South Wales, for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. He also contributes to the Flow-MER Basin Scale Vegetation Theme and other Commonwealth and State funded environmental water monitoring and evaluation projects.
Planning and Evaluating Environmental Watering for Vegetation Outcomes
As the ecological consequences of water resource development have become more widely recognised, so too has our understanding of the needs of riverine ecosystems. This growing awareness has driven significant investment in environmental water allocations and other complimentary conservation management actions alongside an increasing reliance on science to support, monitor, and evaluate these efforts.
I will explore how riverine and floodplain plant conservation and management in the Murray–Darling Basin has become increasingly ambitious and sophisticated. This complexity demands multidisciplinary knowledge and adaptive strategies to navigate trade-offs and prioritise outcomes. Drawing on recent examples, I will illustrate the tools and technologies we are using to support decision-making and evaluation, ranging from drone imagery paired with deep learning to assess floodplain vegetation, the application of population genetics for understanding species movement and population structure, and the use of long-term data sets to track floodplain vegetation responses to flows