Lecture 12: Water quality monitoring in QLD and Indigenous perspectives

What is the Catchment Water Quality Alliance?

The Catchment Water Quality Alliance (CWQA) is a collaboration between:

• Queensland Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation – Water Quality and Investigations

• The University of Queensland – Reef Catchments Science Partnership

• James Cook University – TropWATER

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR)

• The largest reef ecosystem in the world

  • 348 000 km² and ~2300 km long

  • 35 catchments

    • ~430 000 km²

• 3000 coral reefs and 300 coral cays

• 150 inshore mangrove islands

• Habitat to a large number of species:

  • 100 species of jellyfish

  • 3000 varieties of molluscs

  • 500 species of worms

  • 1625 types of fish

  • 133 varieties of sharks and rays

  • >30 species of whales and dolphins

• Tourist attraction:

  • ~$6 billion annually to Australian economy

  • support ~66 000 jobs

2022 SCS conclusions

• Land management and catchment modification impair GBR water through:

  • extensive vegetation degradation

  • changed hydrology

  • increased erosion

  • expansion of fertilised land uses, urban centres and coastal developments

• Pollutant loads from the catchment area to GBR have increased from pre-development loads by 1.4 to 5 times (fine
  sediments), and 1.5 to 3 times (dissolved inorganic nitrogen) w variations depending on basins

• Poor water quality (elevated fine sediments, nutrients and pesticides present), continues to have the greatest impacts on freshwater, estuarine, coastal and inshore marine ecosystems.

• Climate change is the primary threat to the GBR — good water quality supports healthy and resilient ecosystems, recovery from disturbances (mass bleaching and extreme weather)

• Several land management practices and remediation actions are cost-effective methods in improving water quality

  • translating these into more substantial pollutant reductions requires significant scaling up, prioritisation of pollutant hotspots, and greater knowledge of the costs/co-benefits of practice adoption

• Focus on locally effective management solutions can encourage faster adoption, using collaborative approaches involving landholders, Indigenous communities, the broader community, policy makers and scientists

• Monitoring, modelling and reporting programs underpin GBR ecosystems and provide knowledge to inform strategies.

  • programs could be strengthened and refined by increasing their spatial and temporal coverage to capture regional and local differences (provide balanced coverage, improve trend analysis and quantify uncertainties)

• Expanded research and more consistent methods are urgently needed to adequately assess:

  • co-benefits and efficiency (including costs) of management solutions across different landscape and climate conditions

  • effectiveness of improvement programs and instruments including assessment beyond the life of programs

  • ecosystem risks from a wider range of pollutants

GBR threats

• Development

  • broad-scale clearing of habitats

  • reclamation for urban and industrial development

• Direct use

  • over-fishing of some species

  • illegal fishing

  • impacts on discarded catch

  • damage to habitats

• Water quality

  • fine sediment

  • excess nutrients

  • pesticides and other pollutants

Reef protection regulations

• Record keeping (application rate and label requirements)

• Minimum practice agricultural standards

• Farm nitrogen and phosphorus budget (sugarcane only)

• New or expanding cropping and horticulture activities

• New, expanded or intensified industrial land use activities

Monitoring objectives for GBR

• Monitoring the following in GBR catchments:

  • Event and ambient concentrations of sediment (total suspended solids)

  • Nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus analytes)

  • Pesticides

  • Sediment and nutrient loads (annual and daily) and the calculate annual pesticide risk metric

• Concentrations and loads data are provided to:

  • calibrate and validate the Source Catchment models which are used to assess progress towards the Reef 2050 WQIP water quality targets

  • verify water quality for marine monitoring results in the Reef Report Card

  • be used for the Regional Report Cards

Non-point source monitoring

• Monitoring

  • diffuse contaminants

  • event conditions

  • ambient conditions

  • weekly and monthly

• Data collected by

  • automated samplers

  • in-situ probes

  • grab sampling

  • passive samplers

  • Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler

P2R: GBR Catchment Loads Monitoring Program

• The program monitors across six natural resource management areas:

  • monitoring occurs in 25 basins out of 35

  • at 65 sites; which includes 57 sites for nutrients and sediments and 31 sites for pesticides

  • an additional 52 near real time micro-sites for nitrate and sediment

• Monitoring approximately 92% of TSS load and 88% of DIN load discharged to the Reef lagoon and the majority of agricultural pesticide inputs for the pesticide risk metric