Agricultural Use Report Card development: A case study in the Fitzroy Basin, Queensland

Abstract

Agriculture is heavily reliant on readily available water of a suitable quality for stock consumption and irrigation of crops. While technical methods for assessing water quality are available, methods to summarise the results and communicate it to a broader audience are lacking. Here the development of an Agricultural Use Report Card in the Fitzroy Basin, Queensland, is outlined. This study summarises findings and includes a methodology developed and deployed to deliver these stock and crop water suitability assessments. We also discuss the index developed to underpin agricultural use, report card publication and communication, along with the online assessment architecture used to facilitate multi-tier result interrogation by end users. This study found surface waters of the Fitzroy were generally of good or very good quality for agricultural uses. Occasional exceedances of agricultural suitability thresholds for several indicators were identified, and we discuss the method used for exceedance identification and a novel style of exceedance reporting that provides a greater degree of transparency than traditional aquatic ecosystem report card approaches.