Monitoring water quality for improved land management

Researchers from CSIRO’s Water for a Healthy Country Flagship and the University of Tasmania are collecting information on phosphorus, nitrogen and ammonia in various locations along the Duck River to help explain the links between land-use management and the impact on water ecosystems.

In a Tasmanian first, high resolution monitoring equipment will be deployed in an environmental setting, collecting this information at intervals as brief as two minutes.

The research team from UTAS and CSIRO come together under the banner of Landscape Logic – a research hub under the Commonwealth Environmental Research Facilities scheme, managed by the Commonwealth Department of Environment and Water Resources. It is a partnership between six regional organisations, five research institutions and state land management agencies in Tasmania and Victoria.

This project, one of seven projects within Landscape Logic, aims to gather more information about the relationship between land use, catchment management decisions and water quality in the Duck River catchment. This will include detailed water-quality monitoring at various locations over the next two years.

The Duck river catchment services dairy, forestry, agricultural and marine industries as well as urban users.

CSIRO research leader Dr Kirsten Verburg says the aim of the monitoring is to tease out how the catchment ‘works’. This includes identifying what forms of the nutrients are most critical, whether dissolved nutrients or those attached to sediments, or whether organic or inorganic, if they are coming from specific soil types or land uses, and how the nutrients reach the river. This could occur through surface run-off, sub-surface flow or through groundwater.

“Ultimately, the knowledge gathered through this research will increase our understanding of how the Duck River catchment works. It will assist local land owners and catchment managers develop a range of management options and guide decisions by catchment authorities such as Cradle Coast Natural Resource Management,” says Dr Verburg.

Contact: Kirsten Verburg, CSIRO Land and Water
Email: kirsten.verburg@csiro.au