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The water will travel thousands of kilometers before it finally reaches the lowest natural point in Australia, Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.
The lake has not been completely dry in years, but this amount of water will be enough to fill it, a phenomenon that only happens a few times, occurring for the last time in 1999-2001 and before that in the historical flood of 1974.
In its path, the water leaves hundreds of thousands of cattle and lost sheep, thousands of kilometers of destroyed fences and private roads, and ruins.
“Water goes back, people are returning to their homes and coverage and seeing this deep and stinky mud that covers everything … It is almost difficult to understand how much destruction there has been in that vast area,” said Dr. Jennifer Silcock, an ecologist at the University of Queensland.
“At this time, most people are really dealing with the consequences and are quite devastating.
But in this hard country of ‘boom and bust’, which is destructive will also be regenerative.
In a matter of weeks, the naked flood plains will be transformed into lush green pasture gardens, full of insects and birds.
“It’s just an incredible renewal. What was a naked land becomes this wild flower garden,” Silcock said.
Country of ‘Boom and Bust’
The country of the channel is the last unregulated river system in the world and the community has fought hard to keep it like this, resisting irrigation and mining proposals.
“What we have in the country’s country is so unique and special,” Silcock said.
“Local residents and traditional owners and the community and conservationists and environmentalists have worked together to try to keep these rivers the most indomitable and wild as they can be, because they are such a surprising ecological system that we have, and we are really seeing that expressed at this time.”
Over there, the flood and drought cycles are natural and anticipated.
“This flood is something that these communities and cattle and pastoral industry depend absolutely,” he said.
“That is why it is considered that the country’s country is one of the best fattening countries for cattle in Australia.
“But I think the speed and only the scale took people by surprise, the rains were above what was predicted.”
She said that as the weather is heated, it is likely that intense rain events will become more frequent and less predictable.
“Obviously, we are dealing with large amounts of uncertainty because what is happening with the weather is not precedent, and that is probably in part why the forecasts will really begin to fight to do it well, because what are based on the forecasts are previous events and previous data collected in the last century and a little more and we are in a kind of unpleasant territory now.”
When will the water arrive at Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre?
In general, the water of the flood of northern Queensland moves slowly through the snail, filling the intricate network of tributaries that feed and swell the Diamantine and Georgina and Cooper Creek rivers, sometimes it takes months to reach the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin.
Much of that evaporates before I get there.
“The water travels very, very slowly because it has to fill a complete network of water holes in the river channels,” Silcock said.
“In some places, the flood plain has more than 50 kilometers wide.”
Once the water reaches the lake, there is nothing more to flow and the basin explodes in life.
“When he is booming, there is life like you would simply not believe out there … everything is attracted to that water,” Silcock said.
The seed that has been latent on the ground until a decade Germina, shrimp populations, fish and insects thriving, attracting huge flocks of migratory birds.
But the water is shallow and quickly evaporates in the intense heat of the interior, returning the basin to a vast pan.
This time, record rain in March reached the back of five years of rain superior to the average, which means that the muddy torrent of water travels south faster than would do it if the earth was dry and the basin is already wet and green.
“He has been quite wet since 2019, so there would have been some water to Lake Eyre a lot in the last five years,” Silcock said.
“But filling Lake Eyre is something totally different because so much water is needed to fill it.
“In terms of this amount of water, I imagine that it will be more full than it has been for some years and could have water for a couple of years from now on.”
For most Australians, who have never visited the country of the channel, now it would be an extraordinary moment to see it, he said.
“Once all roads are open and repaired, it will be an incredible time to see the flood plains, the large flood plains of the Cooper, the Thompson and the ship, thus further north, around Longreach, and then they are headed through the Cooper around Windorah and the south of Windorah to Innaminckka, that whole country will be so green and so full of life.”
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