GISERA MarineAn integrated study of the Gladstone marine system

| GISERA Marine - Russ Babcock | 11-12 August 20151

Russ Babcock, Mark Baird, Rich Pillans, Toby Patterson, Bee Morello, Gary Fry, Mick Haywood, Kadija Oubelkheir, Lesley Clementson, Emlyn Jones, Rob Kenyon, Col Limpus, Nugzar Margvelashvili, Mathieu Mongin, Barbara Robson, Thomas Schroeder, Jenny Skerratt, Karen Wild-Allen, Nagur Cherekuru,

GISERA & Development in Port Curtis

• CSG developments are large, but …

• Long History of Port Development, other impacts

• Lessons or insights from Gladstone are relevant to many other areas of coastal Qld.

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GISERA Marine overall goals

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Improve the scientific knowledge base needed to anticipate and mitigate impacts, and to identify opportunities for trade-offs and offsets:• assist agencies in evaluating and refining environmental trigger levels for

water quality parameters and seagrass• examine options for management of the iconic fauna such as turtles • increase the level of confidence around environmental decision making

processes in Port Curtis (and potentially more widely)

Insights from Gladstone are relevant to many other areas of Coastal QLD

GISERA Marine Components

1. Habitat quality – water column properties and seagrass distribution

2. Modelling – Hydrodynamic / Biogeochemical model of Port Curtis; predicting water quality and seagrass growth

3. Turtle behaviour – habitat use and risk modelling

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Water quality and seagrass growth

getting the basics right

Measuring water quality

• Salinity

• Temperature

• Secchi

• TSM

• Particulate & detrital

absorptions

• CDOM

• Pigment analysis

GISERA Marine | Russ Babcock7 |

TSM Secchi Inorganic Fraction CDOM

2012

2013

GISERA Marine | Russ Babcock8 |

Algal pigments

• Biomass of phytoplankton higher in 2012

• Diatoms dominant, green algae also present

• Sites outside the harbour different, dominated by cyanobacteria, picoplankton

2012

2013

Inherent Optical Properties (IOPs) from model state.

Suspended sediment properties: scattering / attenuation observations from an ACS.

Absorption Scattering Attenuation

Wavelength

Surface reflectance estimates

10

Reflectance calculations based on field observations match well with remote sensing algorithms

Measuring seagrass

Model validation• Species• Depth-range

(presence/absence)Turtle habitat use

• Species• Cover• Biomass (wwt/dwt)

Seagrass depth-range sampling 877 seagrass stations at 41 seagrass beds

PBN1 & 5

CI1CI2CI3CI4

CI5

CI6

CH1CH2

PBN4

PBS2

PBS1FInew

FI2

NB1

NB3

NB4

Broad agreement with TropWater results

Critical light levels for seagrass beds

y = -1.8054x + 1.6531R² = 0.5084

-4

-3

-2

-1

0

1

2

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

Max

. sea

gras

s de

pth

(Ht,

m)

Secchi depth (m)

13% Available PAR4.5 Mol PAR m-2 d-1

4 Mol PAR m-2 d-1 corresponds with cut-off point in GISERA seagrass growth model

High resolution sampling of seagrass distribution

Sampling design Observed Zostera

Thank you