NESP MaC Project 3.4 – Better Management of Catchment Runoff to Marine Receiving Environments in Northern Australia, 2023-2024 (GU)
- Between 01/02/2023 - 00:00 and 30/06/2024 - 00:00
This record provides an overview of the NESP Marine and Coastal Hub small-scale study - Project 3.4 – Better Management of Catchment Runoff to Marine Receiving Environments in Northern Australia. For specific data outputs from this project, please see child records associated with this metadata.
There are many catchments in northern Australia where increased catchment development is proposed. This is largely in the form of irrigation development, but also increased cattle stocking rates. Given the relatively low levels of such development in many catchments to date, there is a strong desire to maintain the integrity of coastal and marine receiving environments after the implementation of future developments. The baseline understanding of water quality in receiving marine environments and in the contributing catchments is very limited across much of northern Australia, making management and other development decisions very challenging. However, there are examples of intensive grazing and irrigation developments in northern Australia, e.g. in the Lower Burdekin Delta, adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef coastline, where lessons can be learnt to fast-track understandings and management and set testable hypotheses about the potential impacts of development in other northern catchments. This project aims to take advantage of these existing examples to improve the quality of decision-making around the impact of terrestrial runoff on the marine environment, providing a template for decision-makers.
Planned Outputs
• River Plume modelling [spatial data files]
• Final technical report with analysed data and a short summary of recommendations for policy makers of key findings [written]
Project Aims and Objectives:
1. In a literature review summarise what is known about the impacts of terrestrial runoff on the productivity and health of marine environments northern Australia and examine the relevance for at least three key high-profile development locations in Gilbert-Flinders (Qld), Daly (NT) and Ord (WA)
2. Undertake workshops with key stakeholders in Government, traditional owner groups, NRMs etc to learn from and share knowledge from these studies and propose methods for future modelling, monitoring and research to fill in knowledge gaps
3. Using current and historical satellite imagery over the study catchments with flow hydrographs, define distribution of freshwater river plumes for sediment and nutrients, and their relationship to river flow to examine future plume extent under future development and climate scenarios
4. Examine changes in mangrove distribution using change analysis modelling to determine greenness of mangrove forests in study locations and relationships with catchment hydrology
5. Test hypotheses developed for the Flinders and Gilbert systems on other river systems earmarked for further water development, i.e. Daly, Ord, to determine the critical nature of nutrient inputs from catchments in fuelling estuarine and coastal productivity, assess groundwater contributions to estuarine flow using isotopic measures.
- Michele Burford
Project Leader
Griffith University
m.burford@griffith.edu.au
- National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine and Coastal Hub
- marine
- MARINE
- Coastal Waters (Australia)