TNQ Drought Hub
James Cook University Australia
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Program: Transformational Agricultural Systems

Program Goal

To achieve efficient and collaborative translation, provision, evaluation and use of knowledge across production, natural resource management and business management domains.

The Transformation Agricultural System program will deliver on this through four key activities.

 

 

Featured Projects

Climate Data Analysis

Using advanced techniques and expert knowledge, we have been working with our Nodes to analysis multiple towns across the region to help land managers better understand weather patterns and climate trends more clearly, enabling them to make better decisions for their farming practices and achieve better results.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) framework

ESG is a framework that can help producers to address sustainability issues, enhance sustainability performance, increase resilience, reduce risks and create opportunities. Learn about ESG and how you can implement these practices to reduce risks and create opportunities.

Latest Updates

Activity 1: Drought Investigation

The TNQ Hub is accessing and interpreting climate data from a number of sources (e.g Bureau of Meteorology, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries) to help identify future drought impacts for land managers. Each of the TNQ Hub Drought Resilience Coordinators are working closely with producers and industry groups to integrate local knowledge and available climate data to enhance decision making. 

Activity 2: Sustainable Finance and Insurance

The TNQ Hub is enhancing and building knowledge of the benefits and risks for farmers looking to enter the environmental market space. A number of products will be developed in conjunction with the TNQ Hub Drought Resilience Coordinators to ensure the products meet the needs of each region. 

As part of this activity, the TNQ Hub in collaboration with key industry experts are investigating a potential opportunity to develop an insurance product aimed at enhancing drought resilience.

Activity 3: AgTech Drought Solution

This activity will demonstrate and adapt the successful water and energy efficiency measures currently being implemented by irrigators in the Burdekin sugar cane industry into other TNQ regions. The TNQ Hub Drought Resilience Coordinators will engage their networks to promote and share opportunities for interested landholders to be involved in demonstrations/farm walks.

Ben Jarihani

Program Lead

Dr Ben Jarihani is a Senior Research Scientist and Associate Professor in Hydroclimate and Hydroinformatics. Dr Jarihani has more than 25 years of consulting, research, teaching and project management experience. His research interest covers broadly Natural Resources Management including hydrology and climate interactions by using different modelling approaches and geospatial science. Ben has excellent technical skills in GIS and remote sensing, hydrological and erosion modelling, spatial surveying, statistical analysis, geomorphology, and drone operation. He is also interested in big data analysis, Internet of Things (IoT) and digital twins of natural environments. Ben is passionate about natural resource management and has numerous publications in related fields. Prior to joining JCU, Ben has worked as a Senior Research Scientist and Associate Professor at University of Central Asia in Tajikistan and within the Sustainability Research Centre at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. During his Fellowship in collaboration with CSIRO, his research focus was on catchment modelling in gullied savanna ecosystems, tributary to the Great Barrier Reef, an important world heritage site in Australia.
Ben completed a PhD at the University of Queensland Australia, where his research focused on novel applications of remotely sensed data and spatial sciences in better understanding of water availability and hydrological and hydrodynamic condition of large catchments within central Australia. Ben also has a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Water Resources a second master’s degree in Geographical Information Systems, from the University of Queensland. Dr Jarihani also worked for 8 years as a hydrologic engineer in several consulting engineers companies, where he led numerous large and innovative projects, addressing complex environmental and natural resource management challenges. During this time Ben developed excellent skills in leadership and project management, delivering projects on time and on budget.

Ana Almeida

senior research officer, sustainable finance and environmental markets

Ana is an Environmental specialist with expertise in ESG analysis and has 20 years of experience in developing, implementing, and evaluating socioenvironmental projects and policies dedicated to promoting sustainability, sustainable land management and regenerative agroecosystems. 

Ana completed her PhD in 2020 where she developed baseline analysis, indicators, and multi-stakeholder frameworks to assess sustainable planning strategies based on economic, social, and environmental criteria. In 2022, Ana won the annual Pittu Laungani Award for his scientific article entitled “Integrating health promotion into sustainable development goal 11: major challenges and learned lessons from Healthy Municipalities, Cities and Communities (HMC) in Brazil.”