South Australia has a history of developing within a highly water constrained environment, under historical climate and, in particular, during the recent millennium drought. Under a likely drier future climate, ensuring reliable water supply to a growing population will require a suite of adaptation measures. These may include smarter, more efficient water use practices, an increase in the diversity of water sources, new water storage options, and effective water resource regulation. Such adaptation measures may be costly and take time to plan and implement.

The type of adaptations required will differ depending on the degree of change our water resources will be subject to and the timescale over which changes may occur. Appropriate planning decisions will be dependent on high quality quantitative information on both the range of future climate scenarios that are appropriate to use in adaptation planning and the impacts of these changes on the runoff and recharge processes that our water resources are dependent on.