This study has identified a number of areas recommended for future work, which are summarised as follows:
• The collection of additional groundwater data to improve the accuracy of the current analysis, and
improve the representation of processes such as the response times to surface water.
• Additional investigation into the likelihood of groundwater being accessed by vegetation in the terminal
wetland (e.g. Driver et al., this congress), using techniques such as remote sensing.
• Improvement of the ecological response model, to include more species, more varied responses, and to
account for semi-permanent/permanent changes in ecosystem behaviour. The model would also be
improved by including site specific data, although this information is still relatively limited.
• Extensions to IQQM to enable external functions to be linked, providing greater flexibility to explore
different types of environmental requirements, rules and responses.
• Greater investigation of the effect of different types of objective functions and decision variables,
particularly in providing more adaptable environmental flow rules.
• Sensitivity analysis of both river system and optimization parameter values.
Despite these limitations, the conceptual model discussed in this paper demonstrates the potential of MOO, to
assist in the exploration of optimal environmental flow rules, and the trade-off between objectives.