eReefs: coasts, computers and collaboration

0:03 - (Hugh Yorkston) The Great Barrier Reef is a huge and complex place, it stretches along

0:07 - 2,300 kilometres of the Queensland coast and there's at least 35 major rivers that discharge

0:14 - water into the Great Barrier Reef. (John Bennett) The work that the reef scientists

0:18 - have done over the last decade has shown us that the sediments, nutrients and pesticides

0:23 - coming from grazing and cropping land is what's causing the major impact to the health of

0:27 - the reef. (Dr Richard Brinkman) eReefs is a project

0:29 - that attempts to combine a whole hierarchy of models to model the impacts of land run

0:34 - off through rivers, down through estuaries and out into the marine environment, to try

0:38 - to pick up changes in reef health associated with changes in land use practices.

0:42 - (Dr Paul Lawrence) Governments, regional bodies and industries are already working closely

0:46 - together, however through eReefs we are able to actually build a better platform for integrating

0:51 - those models so that we can understand from the terrestrial, from the catchment side through

0:55 - the estuaries and then out to the reef -- one integrated modelling tool.

0:59 - (Rob Cocco) One of the challenges with water quality is that it's quite hard as a land

1:04 - manager to know that the actions you do today actually have a benefit to reef health in

1:09 - twenty, twenty five, thirty years' time (Dr Richard Brinkman) When you're trying to

1:12 - understand where a particular farmer that farms in a catchment, where is his footprint

1:16 - on the Great Barrier Reef, we can use these models to understand which particular catchments

1:20 - are impacting which marine regions. (John Bennett) So we can then take that back

1:23 - and work with the farmers and show them why they've got to minimise the excess fertilisers

1:29 - and pesticides coming off cropping land, and the excess sediments coming off the grazing

1:33 - lands. (Rob Cocco) We see phase one of eReefs having

1:36 - been quite successful in starting the process, developing the building blocks.

1:40 - (Dr Richard Brinkman) But even in these first eighteen months, we've delivered hydrodynamic

1:44 - models that give a three dimensional description of river plumes and currents and temperature

1:49 - on the Great Barrier Reef. (Hugh Yorkston) The second phase of eReefs

1:52 - is going to be crucial to bring in those related issues on water quality, the transport of

1:58 - sediments and nutrients, because those are the areas where the impacts happen in the

2:03 - reef. (Dr Andy Steven) We need to move from traditional

2:05 - research products which have a fairly narrow application to a set of systems that provide

2:11 - operational information in near real time. (Peter Coburn) We're monitoring and operating

2:14 - these models to a very high level of performance and reliability. We run ocean models that

2:19 - map the currents and sea surface temperatures all around Australia and the hydrodynamic

2:25 - eReefs model is really a specialisation of that sort of service and will be in fact,

2:29 - what we call nested, within our current models. (Dr John Schubert) The ground-breaking work

2:32 - that's been done here will be able to be taken and utilised in various ways around the world.

2:39 - If we can achieve it for the Great Barrier Reef, that will be a huge success.

2:42 - (Dr Richard Brinkman) One of the greatest innovations of the eReefs project is the ambition

2:45 - to model the whole Great Barrier Reef, it's an immensely large and challenging region

2:51 - and it's never been modelled as one unit before. (Hugh Yorkston) There's significant investment

2:55 - into this project, but that's because there's significant value in the Great Barrier Reef.

3:00 - (Dr Paul Lawrence) So we need to do everything we possibly can to protect that reef and also

3:05 - to ensure that the catchments remain in good health.