Pathways to Improved Water Quality in the GBR Lagoon—Exploring Opportunities for Broadscale Application of Low-Risk Practices in the Lower Burdekin Irrigated Agriculture Areas
Book Chapter ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
Although climate change is recognised as being the dominant influence on the health of the Great Barrier Reef, the effect of land use remains a critical element to be addressed. An area of approximately 90,000 ha of irrigated agriculture in the Lower Burdekin, mainly for sugarcane, produces some of the highest nutrient loads that enter the GBR. The chapter first provides a short description of the effects of a key nutrient, dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), on the health of the GBR and the land-based practices that create the loads and the mechanisms that deliver these nutrients to the GBR. Work in the Lower Burdekin over the past two decades has identified improved irrigation and fertilizer practices that would reduce the levels of exported DIN and thus maintain reef health while at the same time, improve sugarcane productivity. A series of Water Quality Improvement Plans (WQIPs) have supported the uptake of these practices but still fall far short of the broadscale adoption needed to address the issues of reef water quality. The chapter examines both the technical and social constraints to farmers applying these practices. The first of these can be addressed by new platforms for automated irrigation that would enable farmers to apply the improved practices under farm operating conditions. The second would require reframing the WQIPs from water quality to focus to articulating crop productivity and water-efficiency gains to overcome persistent social resistance.
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Publication Name
Oceanographic Processes of Coral Reefs: Physical and Biological Links in the Great Barrier Reef
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ISBN/ISSN
9781003320425
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Pages Count
18
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Publisher
CRC Press
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Boca Raton, Florida, USA
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DOI
10.1201/9781003320425-29