Research interests

• Managing climate variability
• Understanding the climate change impacts on primary industries
• Investigating appropriate adaptation strategies for primary industries
• Precision irrigation management and design
• Evaporation mitigation from Irrigation storages

Background

Helen Fairweather leads the NSW Department of Primary Industries Climate Science and Irrigation Research unit and the CRC for Irrigation Futures Toolkits program.  Through these roles, Helen provides leadership to climate and irrigation researchers within NSW DPI and for irrigation researchers across the 15 partners in the CRC for Irrigation Futures.

Helen joined NSW Agriculture* in 2002 as a Water Use Efficiency Advisory Officer in the Water Use Efficiency Advisory Unit. Prior to taking up this position, Helen held a post-doctoral position with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, based at Lethbridge, Alberta.

Helen’s research interests have included modelling the nutrient balance within feedlots from the ration through to the manure and effluent and its subsequent uptake by a cropping system.  In more recent years the focus has been on irrigation system design and management (particularly irrigation scheduling using weather data), managing climate variability in agriculture, the impacts of climate change on primary industries and assessment of appropriate adaptation strategies.

NSW Department of Primary Industries was formed on July 1, 2004 through an amalgamation of NSW Agriculture, NSW Fisheries, State Forests of NSW and the NSW Department of Mineral Resources.

Qualifications

• B Eng (Ag) (1st Class Honours), 1996, University of Southern Queensland.
• PhD (Environmental Engineering), 1999, University of New England.

Current projects

• Climate change risk assessment in a GIS framework for the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change (Climate Action Grant).
• CRC for Irrigation Futures Toolkits program including projects on solute signatures in the root zone of irrigation system, evaporation measurement and mitigation from on-farm storages and the tools for irrigation longevity and profitability.
• Whole of system water use efficiency modelling.
• Development of an irrigation water use efficiency information package.
• Delivering Climate variability information in a farming systems context.
• The irrigation sustainability challenge.
• Climate risk management for woolgrowers in the sheep wheat and high rainfall zones across Australia.
• Tools to reduce the impact of climate variability in south eastern Australia

Recent Publications

Fairweather, H. and Cowie, 2007. Climate change research priorities for NSW Primary Industries (in press), NSW Department of Primary Industries.

Fairweather, H., Luo, Q., Wiles, P. and Liu, D. 2007. “Quantifying climate risk – the starting point”, paper presented at Greenhouse 2007.

Christen, E.W., Shepheard, M.L., Meyer, W.S., Jayawardane, N.S. and Fairweather, H. 2006. Triple Bottom Line reporting to promote sustainability of irrigation in Australia. Journal of Irrigation and Drainage systems, pp329-343.

Fairweather, H. 2006, “Delivering climate variability information through a farming systems context in northern NSW”. A final project report submitted to the Grains Research and Development Organisation.

Fairweather H. 2006, “Determining the Whole-of-system Water Balance”, paper presented at the ANCID conference, Darwin, NT, Oct 2006.

Christen, E.W., Shepheard, M.L., Jayawardane, N.S., Davidson, P., Mitchell, M., Maheshwari, B. Atkins, D., Fairweather, H.  and Wolfenden J. A. 2206. Guide to using Triple Bottom Line reporting as a framework to promote the sustainability of rural and urban irrigation in Australia”. A final project report presented to CRC for Irrigation Futures.

Fairweather H. 2005, “Bayesian Networks for Water Balances”, poster presented at ANCID conference, Mildura, Vic, Oct 2005.

Fairweather, H. 2005, "Casting a Net over the Bayes to Balance the Water", abstract and poster presented at the CRC for Irrigation Futures Annual Research Forum, Mildura, Vic, Sep 2005.

Christen E.W. Shepheard. M.L. Curtus. A. Fairweather, H. and Maheshwari, B. 2005. “The Sustainability Challenge for Irrigation”, paper presented at the IAA 2005 conference.

Fairweather, H., Austin, N. and Hope, M. 2004, Water Use Efficiency – An Information Package, Irrigation Insights, Number 4. Land and Water Australia – National Program for Sustainable Irrigation.
Fairweather, H. 2004, “The role of objective and subjective assessments in improving irrigation efficiency”, paper presented at the 2004 International Conference on Engineering in Agriculture, Dubbo, NSW.

Fairweather H. 2003, “Determining whole-of-system Water Use Efficiencies for Selected NSW River Valleys”, Northern Murray Darling Workshop 2, Narrabri, NSW.

Swann, B. Giddings, G. Joshua, E., Weldon, P. and Fairweather, H. 2003, “Measure Water to Measure Water – Implementation of the Mobile Irrigation System Evaluation Unit”, Final Report prepared for the funding partners Macquarie River Food and Fibre and Macquarie Valley Land Care Group

Professional associations and activities

• Irrigation Australia Limited (previous Board member and Chair)
• Society for Engineering in Agriculture (previous Chair NSW Branch)

Fields of Research

• 079901 Applied Hydrology (Drainage, Flooding, Irrigation, Quality, etc.)
• 070699 Horticultural Production not elsewhere classified
• 050206 Natural Resource Management
• 040104 Climate Change Processes
• 040105 Climatology (excl. Climate Change Processes) 

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

Keyword/phrase list of research interests

• Irrigation design
• Irrigation management
• Irrigation tools
• Solute signatures
• Agro-meteorology
• Climate change
• Climate variability
• Adaptation to climate change

Contact details