Program Leaders:
Dr Katharina Fabricius, Australian Institute of Marine Science
Professor Richard Pearson, James Cook University
Professor Iain Gordon, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
The quality of water entering the Great Barrier Reef lagoon has
been declining and is negatively affecting the condition of its
ecosystems. There is an urgent need to elevate our certainty
about the effectiveness of actions taken under the Reef Water
Quality Protection Plan (Reef Plan), and for improved
scientific understanding of how the condition of freshwater,
estuarine and marine ecosystems are linked to terrestrial
processes.
Program 7 consists of three main areas:
-
Marine and estuarine water quality;
-
Freshwater water quality; and
-
Ecosystem and social frameworks for water quality.
The main outcome of this Program is to identify robust
indicators for water quality in freshwater, estuarine and marine
ecosystems which will enable the development of tools to improve
water quality specific monitoring and determine pollutant
thresholds of potential concern for exposure of selected
bioindicators. This information will be integrated with
economic and social drivers of land-use management that influence
water quality to produce an Integrated Report Card framework for
water quality. The Program will collaborate with the relevant
managing agencies of the Reef Water Quality Protection
Plan and user groups to assimilate data from multiple sources
into a simplified report card for Great Barrier Reef
catchments. This information will form a significant part of
the water quality reporting under the Reef Plan.
Program 7 will also develop catchment-specific tracers for
improved understanding of the links between terrestrial and marine
water quality, and for identification of Great Barrier Reef lagoon
areas at greatest risk of exposure to land-based pollutants.
The tracer project will characterise and obtain a distinct
isotopic, elemental, physical, and mineralogical 'fingerprint' of
the fine sediments (mud fraction) delivered to the Great Barrier
Reef within selected wet tropics and dry tropics catchments.
In addition, the Program will develop predictive tools to assess
the impacts of changes in land use, management and climate on the
flow, water quality regimes and ecological dynamics of the wetlands
and floodplains of catchments adjacent to the Great Barrier
Reef.
There is a considerable gap in our current understanding of
ecological connectivity between coastal wetlands and reef and the
impact declining water quality has on this important linkage.
