Results of Two Dry-season Surveys of Keppel Bay and Casuarina Creek: Biogeochemical Properties of the Water Column and Underlying Sediments

Brief description

The Fitzoy Estuary is one of several macrotidal estuaries in tropical northern Australia that face ecological change due to agricultural activities in their catchments. The biochemical functioning of such macrotidal estuaries is not well understood in Australia, and there is a pressing need to identify sediment, nutrient and agrochemical pathways, sinks and accumulation rates in these extremely dynamic environments. This is particularly the case in coastal northern Queensland because the impact of water quality changes in rivers resulting from vegetation clearing, changes in land-use and modern agricultural practices are the single greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

This report includes:
1 Aims and Research questions
2 Study Area
3 Climate and Hydrology
4 Geology
5 Vegetation and land use
6 Methods
7 Sampling strategy
8 Water column observations and samples
9 Bottom sediment properties
10 Core and bottle incubations
11 Data analysis
12 Results
13 Discussion
14 The roll of Keppel Bay in accumulating and redirecting sediment and nutrients from the catchment
15 Sediment biogeochemistry
16 Links between primary production, biogeochemistry and sediment dynamics: A preliminary zonation for Keppel Bay
17 Conclusions

Full description

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