CQUniversity Sunwater PhD Scholarship (External)

Water quality monitoring in tropical rivers of northern Australia is complicated by highly variable weather and flows, large and complex water basins, and the cumulative impacts of multiple land uses often including legacies of historical land clearing. Comprehensive monitoring programs that account for all these complexities have high monitoring costs, especially in regional areas with long travel times to sites and few local options for laboratory analysis. Researchers at CQUniversity are investigating options to streamline monitoring programs for tropical impoundments, providing for more targeted and cost-effective programs. A key objective of optimising such monitoring programs is to maintain the high environmental standards required to protect sensitive tropical habitats like the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Sunwater, as the manager of the new Rookwood Weir in the Lower Fitzroy River, previously commissioned CQUniversity to develop the Lower Fitzroy Water Quality Monitoring and Reporting Program. Given the potential for nutrient concentrations to increase following inundation of surrounding land, nutrient monitoring is a key component of the Program. The dynamics of nutrient release from decaying vegetation during inundation has been identified as a key knowledge gap, particularly for tropical rivers. Nutrients are priority pollutants for the GBR (Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan 2021–2025), so this knowledge gap is highly relevant in terms of optimising monitoring programs. This PhD project aims to: 1) investigate opportunities to streamline monitoring of nutrient concentrations; 2) monitor and model the changes in nutrient dynamics that occur in a new tropical impoundment; and 3) provide a conceptual model and management options for existing and new impoundments in northern Australia.