A review of catchment rehydration interventions and development of a decision-support framework for managing leaky landscapes

Agricultural landscapes with poor water retention, often referred to as “leaky landscapes”, represent a growing agro-environmental challenge. Although a wide range of landscape rehydration interventions have been proposed, a comprehensive understanding of the global research landscape, key themes, and knowledge gaps within this field remains limited. This review uses a bibliometric analysis and literature synthesis approach to provide quantitative insights into the landscape rehydration research over the past 100 years. This examines bibliometric indicators such as global research trend over time, keywords co-occurrence, citation impact, and collaboration patterns among countries. We found that landscape rehydration was first reported in the mid-1900s and has continued to expand to over 104 countries, focusing on intervention effectiveness, benefits, and limitations. Despite the growing body of literature, the review revealed that most studies evaluate individual interventions in isolation and provide limited guidance on how to select appropriate interventions under varying conditions. This complexity leaves land managers without clear direction for selecting interventions across different landscape contexts. To address this gap, the insights from the literature review were synthesised into a practical decision-support framework that integrates environmental suitability, technical feasibility, economic considerations, and socio-environmental impacts. Further, the framework is demonstrated through a case study application in the Turnip Creek catchment in Victoria, Australia. We identified that pasture improvement, contour ripping, and vegetative cover enhancement are suitable interventions, highlighting the potential support of the framework for future rehydration projects.