CATCHMENT-TO-REEF

Water Quality Conference

The ‘Catchment to Reef: Water Quality Issues in the Great Barrier Reef Region’ conference was held in Townsville from 9-11 March.

The majority of current water quality management initiatives have been based on knowledge that was published more than two years ago. In the meantime, new studies have been undertaken, both on the Great Barrier Reef catchment and its waters. This conference updated scientists, managers and other interested parties on new regional water quality research.

The Barron River. Photo by Bryony Barnett, CRC Reef

The conference was organised by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, CRC Reef, James Cook University, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the Australian Museum and the Rainforest CRC.

A total of 54 oral and 11 poster presentations dealt with research on catchment sources of sediments and nutrients, transport and fate of these sediments and nutrients, ecosystem indicators of water quality, water quality impacts on tropical aquatic plants and on coral reef ecosystems, and contemporary water quality research and monitoring issues. The conference was attended by about 170 delegates from the scientific community, State and Commonwealth agencies, representatives of Natural Resource Management groups on the Great Barrier Reef catchment, and agricultural industry and community representatives.

The proceedings of the conference will be published as a special issue in the international journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, and will be a benchmark of our current state of knowledge on Great Barrier Reef water quality. Through this, currently unpublished information will be made widely accessible for further interpretation and application.

The book of abstracts is published as CRC Reef Technical Report No. 53 and is available online or as a hard copy from CRC Reef.

New Conference

A follow-up conference Healthy Country – Healthy Reef is planned for 23-25 November 2004, with the aim of turning research into water quality solutions that can be delivered ‘on ground’. The joint CRC Reef and Rainforest CRC conference will be run in conjunction with the Rainforest CRC Annual Conference in Cairns, where researchers will network, hear the latest results and put their collaboration into action. Catchment-to-Reef sessions will include theme-based workshops and field trips to demonstration sites.

For more information about the planned conference contact Ms Bryony Barnett, CRC Reef Extension Manager, 07 4729 8401, bryony.barnett@crcreef.com or Mr Tim Prior, Catchment-to-Reef Communication and Liaison Officer, 07 4781 5269, tim.prior@jcu.edu.au

Tim Prior. Photo by Neil Young.

New Staff

James Cook University Masters graduate Mr Tim Prior has been appointed as Catchment-to-Reef Communication and Liaison Officer. Tim will be forging communication links between researchers for the Catchment-to-Reef project and stakeholders including landowners and government agencies.

New Students

CRC Reef has funded scholarships for four new PhD students as part of the Catchment-to-Reef project. Ms Melanie Shaw from The University of Queensland, and Mr Matt Slivkoff from Curtin University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science are researching advanced technologies for monitoring water quality on the Great Barrier Reef.

Mr Ben Johnson and Mr Tim Cooper, both from James Cook University, are working on new tools to assess the health of inshore ecosystems such as seagrass beds and coral reefs.

See the CRC Reef website for more information on the Catchment to Reef project.