Project Leader and Host
Organisation
Mr Jon Brodie, Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater
Research,
James Cook University
Project Description and Objectives
For detailed descriptions of the outputs for
this project for Year 4 (2009/2010) of the MTSRF Research
Programme, see the Annual Research
Plan.
The principal objectives
of this project are to assess the risk to reef ecosystems from the
various land-sourced pollutants entering the Great Barrier Reef.
Risk will be assessed by establishing explicit links between the
sources of pollutants within catchments (land uses, land management
practices), delivery of these materials to the river mouths
(including trapping and transformation processes) and transport of
the materials in the GBR lagoon (including trapping, transformation
and storage regimes). Thus exposure of Great Barrier Reef
ecosystems (particularly coral reefs, seagrass meadows, mangrove
forests and the water column ecosystem) to land-sourced pollutants
can be determined and, in combination with the known
toxicities/effect concentrations of the pollutants, risk can be
assessed.
The project will
characterise and obtain a distinct 'fingerprint' of the fine
sediments (mud fraction) entering the marine environment, using
their isotopic and elemental properties, and link these to the
sediment sources of the major terrestrial catchments. It will also
examine historical changes in the delivery of terrestrial materials
from the major river systems in the Rockhampton-Cairns region to
the marine environment using coral and sediment cores. This will
involve determining transport mechanism, residences time and fate
of terrigenous materials in the floodplains, estuaries, inshore
reefal areas and mid-shelf regions of the Great Barrier Reef, and
develop and apply new technologies to specifically trace pathways
of the key nutrient elements phosphorus and nitrogen from the
terrestrial catchments, through estuaries, inshore coastal zones to
the mid-shelf of the Great Barrier Reef.
Key objectives of this project are to:
-
Trace materials in the terrestrial
environment – generation, transport, transformation,
trapping;
-
Trace materials in the marine
environment – transport, transformation, trapping and fate;
and
-
Trace inshore-offshore sediment
transport in the Wet Tropics – relationships between sediment
input and transport and regional turbidity regimes.
