Herbert River integration study (C2.6)

Task leader: Dr David Williams, CRC Reef.

Task associate: NA.

As part of its involvement in studying the impacts of landuse on catchment behaviour, CSIRO initiated a major, multidivisional effort in 1994 through the Coastal Zone MDP. As part of this MDP and later through the Sugar CRC, the former Divisions of Soils, Tropical Crops and Pastures and Water Resources invested substaintial resources into the study of the Herbert River catchment. Complementary research in Hinchinbrook Channel has been conducted through the CRC Reef and by Aims and on some of the freshwater systems by ACTFR. Whilst the MDP has formally been terminated and serveral significant research outcomes have been generated at an individual project level, both within the CSIRO and in other agencies, an integration of the various project outcomes into a whole of catchment study is yet outstanding. Bringing this work together will provide a substantial body of knowledge about the important tropical catchment. In particular, there is a need to integrate the various research components of the study in an effort to quantify the nature and extend of impacts of land management practices in the Herbert catchment on coastal marine and freshwater ecosystems.

In the search for sustainable land and water management at a regional or whole of catchment level, many policy innovations and technologies are forestalled by institutional and market based impediments, irrespective of the level of biophysical understanding and availabilility of improved land and water management strategies. In context of the Herbert, this means that the fill benefit of the past and future research outcomes will not be achieved unless an attempt is made to provide both the framework to relate the terrestrial catchment dynamics to impacts on aquatic, estuarine and marines ecosystems, as well as to integrate biophysical systems knowledge into more general resources management and planning frameworks. Consequently, using the Herbert as a case study, this porposal aims to blend insights from policy, institutional, socio-economic and biophysical analyses to provide more holistic and equitable approaches to sustainable catchment management.