| | Professor Peter Cullen was an inspirational and persuasive thinker who was a major driving force in the development of freshwater ecology and water resource policy formation in Australia and worldwide. He was instrumental in setting up the Cooperative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology, he promoted major governmental reforms in Australia such as the National Water Initiative, and his contributions have been recognised in awards such as the Naumann-Thienemann Medal, the highest award from the International Society for Limnology. Peter passed away in March 2008, and the papers in this Special Issue honour his legacy and achievements.
The issue opens with three papers describing ‘big picture’ case studies from Europe, New Zealand and Australia that illustrate the social, political and scientific complexities of managing large rivers and their catchments worldwide. These are followed by five papers outlining specific examples of the applications of models for communicating complex systems dynamics to managers, practical approaches to partnerships in collaborative catchment management and Adaptive Environmental Management, the role of science-policy integration across jurisdictional boundaries, and some solutions to the four main impediments to integrative freshwater research. The final paper in the Special Issue synthesizes these themes and draws on a wide literature to review the attributes of ‘best available science’, one of the cornerstones of effective natural resource management.
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