Assessment of the relative risk of water quality to ecosystems of the Great Barrier Reef. A report to the Department of the Environment and Heritage Protection, Queensland Government, Brisbane - Report 13/28

A risk assessment method was developed and applied to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to provide robust and scientifically defensible information for policy makers and catchment managers on the key land-based pollutants of greatest risk to the health of the two main GBR ecosystems (coral reefs and seagrass beds). This information was used to inform management prioritisation for Reef Rescue 2 and Reef Plan 3. The risk assessment method needed to take account of the fact that catchment-associated risk will vary with distance from the river mouth, with coastal habitats nearest to river mouths most impacted by poor marine water quality. The main water quality pollutants of concern for the GBR are enhanced levels of suspended sediments, excess nutrients and pesticides added to the GBR lagoon from the adjacent catchments. Until recently, there has been insufficient knowledge about the relative exposure to and effects of these pollutants to guide effective prioritisation of the management of their sources

Science-based catchment management is evolving along the Great Barrier Reef of Australia

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is the world's largest reef system (with about 12% of the world's coral reef area) and almost the whole area is covered by a multi-use marine park. About 33% of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is completely protected from fishing and exploitation. However, the GBR is particularly vulnerable to terrestrial runoff of sediments, nutrients and pesticides, especially from expanding and intensifying agriculture. The GBR is located on a shallow and wide continental shelf that traps incoming materials from 35 major river catchments along the more than 2300 km length. Therefore, reducing the damage coming from these catchments presented a particularly challenging task for management. The initial focus for management was to address the obvious direct inputs of pollutants from urban areas, such as discharges from\ud sewage treatment plants, by regulating waste management facilities and establishing best practice standards. However, the science was beginning to identify that the discharges from agricultural lands into rivers was providing a far greater proportion of pollutants (more than 80%). Therefore, this task needed, and has since received, robust scientific evidence and strong public support to show that conservation of the GBR is important. However, there was vigorous debate until the early 2000s about whether river runoff was really a problem, and if it was, then what should be done to reduce the effects of terrestrial runoff on such a large system

Catchment management in a dry tropical river near the Great Barrier Reef

[Extract] The Burdekin River is one of the largest catchments (133 000 km2) within the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchment area. It is also the largest contributor of sediments to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. Land use within the catchment is dominated by two main agricultural industries: rangeland beef grazing across most of the catchment area (about 120 000 km2); and intensive, irrigated sugarcane cultivation in the lower coastal plain. The annual rate of sediment delivery is now 8 times higher than it was at the time of European settlement of the catchment in about 1850; the increased sedimentation is due to increased erosion associated with low vegetation cover from dry land grazing. \ud \ud With the introduction of grazing on the catchment in about 1860, initially sheep, but after 1865 predominantly cattle, erosion increased greatly as did sediment loads from the river to the GBR lagoon. The first cattle raised were British breeds (Shorthorn and Hereford; Bos taurus) but in the 1960s these breeds were replaced with more drought and tick resistant breeds from India, particularly those developed from Brahmin and Zebu (Bos indica) breeds. These newer breeds were much more adapted to tropical conditions and could survive better through droughts increasing greatly the reduction in pasture cover and increasing erosion further (see Cover photo)

A method for risk analysis across governance systems: a Great Barrier Reef case study

Healthy governance systems are key to delivering sound environmental management outcomes from global to local scales. There are, however, surprisingly few risk assessment methods that can pinpoint those domains and sub-domains within governance systems that are most likely to influence good environmental outcomes at any particular scale, or those if absent or dysfunctional, most likely to prevent effective environmental management. This paper proposes a new risk assessment method for analysing governance systems. This method is then tested through its preliminary application to a significant real-world context: governance as it relates to the health of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The GBR exists at a supra-regional scale along most of the north eastern coast of Australia. Brodie et al (2012 Mar. Pollut. Bull. 65 81-100) have recently reviewed the state and trend of the health of the GBR, finding that overall trends remain of significant concern. At the same time, official international concern over the governance of the reef has recently been signalled globally by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). These environmental and political contexts make the GBR an ideal candidate for use in testing and reviewing the application of improved tools for governance risk assessment. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd

Managing the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia, is a remarkable structure – both for its abundant biodiversity and its extent. It fringes the north - east Australian coast and the state of Queensland for approximately 2000 km and comprises over 3200 coral reefs embedded in an ecosystem that includes mangrove forests, coastal wetlands and estuaries, seagrass meadows, deep shoals, continental shelf margin and slope. It is the world's largest World Heritage Area. Like many reefs around the world, the GBR is under stress from three main influences: over-harvesting of resources, climate change and terrestrial runoff of contaminants (Pandolfi et al. 2003). The GBR was declared a Marine Park in 1975. It is managed as a zoned, multi-use area with over 30% of the area of all of its 70 bioregions protected in high conservation, no take zones incorporated into a Park - wide zoning plan (Day et al. 2004). \ud \ud The catchments which adjoin the GBR are equally remarkable in many ways and astonishing in their diversity, but have unfortunately received much less protection. Through runoff of contaminants though, the health of the GBR is intimately connected to the environmental management of these catchments (Haynes et al. 2007), especially with the projected impacts of climate change (Johnson and Marshall 2007). This chapter identifies and examines the challenges\ud to improving management of these catchments for their long-term protection and maintenance of GBR resilience.\ud \ud These challenges range from understanding the complex biophysical interactions between land and GBR ecosystems through to assessment of the economic and social realities, and the costs and benefits of the change needed for better\ud protection. A substantial start has been made with a Reef Water Quality Protection Plan (the Reef Plan – The State of Queensland and Commonwealth of Australia 2003)and should be\ud accelerated through new Australian Government initiatives including a Reef Rescue Program introduced by the incoming Government in late 2007. Together these two plans will provide a framework and resources for supporting community-based regional Natural Resource Management(NRM) in target setting and investment in management change. New Australian and State (Queensland) Government investment is focussed on these initiatives and on the delivery of supporting science. The response is in essence a complex and broad scale adaptive management exercise. Much of this chapter explores this experience so far

Spatially explicit scenarios for conservation planning in the Great Barrier Reef coastal zone, Australia

The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA) borders the east coast of Northern Australia for almost 2000 km. Parts of this coast have been extensively developed with planned and potential further coastal developments, including for mining, ports, agriculture, urban, industrial and tourism. These developments may threaten the health of the GBRWHA through sediment, nutrient and pollutant run-off and habitat loss. In the context of conservation planning, the future must be taken into consideration to understand which ecosystems, species or ecological processes may be at risk and where. However, future coastal development is difficult to predict as it depends on volatile socio-economic factors. With this in mind, we develop a research project that uses spatially explicit scenario planning to identify plausible futures to 2035 for the GBRWHA coastal zone. Land use change modelling to produce eight scenarios is being done with GIS. The resulting maps of scenarios allow for comprehensive conservation planning

2013 scientific consensus statement: resilience of Great Barrier Reef marine ecosystems and drivers of change

[Extract] This chapter focuses on the temporal dynamics, spatial extent and cumulative impacts of current and future drivers of change on Great Barrier Reef water quality, and subsequent impacts on marine ecosystems in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. These include the acute influences of large flood events driven by extreme weather, salinity stress, tropical cyclones, thermal stress, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and other anthropogenic drivers such as coastal development activities. To date, impacts on the Great Barrier Reef from these drivers have been documented but the potential for additive and synergistic effects will be more severe than indicated from studies of individual stressors (Veron et al.,2009)