Abstract
Managing receiving-water quality, ecosystem health and ecosystem service delivery is challenging in regions where extreme rainfall and runoff events occur episodically, confounding and often intensifying land-degradation impacts. We synthesize the approaches used in river, reservoir and coastal water management in the event-driven subtropics of Australia, and the scientific research underpinning them. Land-use change has placed the receiving waters of Moreton Bay, an internationally-significant coastal wetland, at risk of ecological degradation through increased nutrient and sediment loads. The event-driven climate exacerbates this issue, as the waterways and ultimately Moreton Bay receive large inputs of nutrients and sediment during events, well above those received throughout stable climatic periods. Research on the water quality and ecology of the region’s rivers and coastal waters has underpinned the development of a world-renowned monitoring program and, in combination with catchment-source tracing methods and modeling, has revealed the key mechanisms and management strategies by which receiving-water quality, ecosystem health and ecosystem services can be maintained and improved. These approaches provide a useful framework for management of water bodies in other regions driven by episodic events, or where novel stressors are involved (e.g., climate change, urbanization), to support sustained ecosystem service delivery and restoration of aquatic ecosystems.
Highlights
Managing receiving-water quality, ecosystem health and ecosystem service delivery is challenging in regions where extreme rainfall and runoff events occur episodically, confounding and often intensifying land-degradation impacts
These findings suggest that water quality is likely to continue to deteriorate if nutrient loads from catchments are not mitigated, and that effective management will require mitigation measures that target both nitrogen and phosphorus
Decline in Moreton Bay’s ecosystem health and likely concomitant declines in ecosystem service delivery have been indicated by increasing frequency of phytoplankton blooms, disappearance of seagrass beds, and declining water quality [51,55]
Summary
The management of receiving waters to optimize ecological and human-value objectives is a task undertaken collaboratively by scientists, economists, governments and communities in many regions across the world. Large quantities of sediment, organic matter, nutrients and pollutants are mobilized from the land and upstream sources and transported via waterways downstream to adjacent wetlands and coastal waters within very short time periods These events may occur infrequently or unpredictably, which can lead to uncertainty about the extent and frequency of monitoring required to encapsulate the full range of event characteristics and associated ecological responses. Natural resource management must consider the impacts of current changes in land use together with considerable legacy issues, as well as the effects of and uncertainties associated with extreme climatic events [4] This context has influenced the Australian development of approaches to ecological monitoring and management of receiving waters for event-driven ecosystems. The event-driven nature of the region’s climate exacerbates this issue, as the waterways and Moreton Bay receive large, pulsed inputs of nutrients and sediment during flood events, which occur on top of the background-level inputs received during more-stable climatic periods
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