New tools for assessing health, status and trends in nearshore marine ecosystems (C7.2)
Task leader: Dr Katharina Fabricius, Australian Institute of MArine Science.
Task associate: NA.
Through the Great Barrier Reef Water Quality Protection Plan, the National
Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality (NAP) and National Heritage
Trust (NHT2), the Commonwealth and Queensland governments will assist
landholders in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchment to reduce terrestrial
runoff off sediment and nutrients to the reef. The aim of these plans
is to improve water quality in the GBR lagoon and thereby, the "health" of those parts of the GBR most affected by land runoff within the next
10 years. The development of the capacity to reliably monitor (audit)
the status of nearshore marine eco-systems and to track changes in the
health of nearshore systems will be an essential part of the overall effort.
This information will provide feedback to governments, land users and
land managers on the changing status of at-risk areas of the GBR, and
more importantly, on the effectiveness of changing land use and land management
practices on the reef. Monitoring and auditing techniques shown to be
effective in the GBR would likely be effective for monitoring status and
trends in nearshore reef systems elsewhere in the tropics.
Objectives
- Develop and validate new tools for monitoring trends and detecting sub-lethal
stress in key organisms (microbes, corals, seagrasses) living in nearshore
habitats of the GBR.
- Collect and verify baseline information on the status of key organisms
(microbes, corals, seagrasses) in nearshore eco-systems of the GBR using
the new assessment tools, as a basis for monitoring future changes.
- Develop a clear understanding of coral resilience and bio-diversity in
reef communities at greatest risk from degraded water quality in the nearshore
zone of the GBR.
- Prepare, validate and disseminate protocols for the application of the
new assessment and monitoring tools developed as a basis for ongoing monitoring
of water quality status in and effects on the GBRWHA.
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