Water quality and fish refugia in riverine waterholes in northern Queensland potentially subject to irrigation development

Key Points: • Northern Australia has potential for additional agricultural and pastoral production, based on more intensive use of its land and water resources. • Waterholes in northern Australia also provide critical refugia habitat for many aquatic animals, and changes to the timing, size and duration of flow owing to water extraction could lead to significant deleterious consequences on aquatic habitat quality, resilience and suitability. • Turbid waterholes are more thermally stratified, by several degrees Celsius, due to the surface waters retaining heat, compared to clear waterholes which are well mixed. • Thermal regime of waterholes is important driving primary production, which supports higher order waterhole biota.

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7th Australian Stream Management Conference: catchment to coast

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