Strategic focus points for 2026 Burdekin Regional Water Quality Science Forum
Strategic, collaborative, targeted, selective. They’re some of the main focus points to come out of the 2026 Burdekin Regional Water Quality Science Forum.
Held in the field and at the Home Hill Memorial Hall, it drew more than 60 people from across the agribusiness sector including scientists, farmers, producers, Traditional Owners, service providers, extension officers, conservationists and government planners and funders.
STRATEGIC
Several speakers talked about adopting a strategic approach while applying immediate solutions to immediate problems.
Molongle Creek
NQ Dry Tropics Soil Conservation Officer Bernie Claussen led the forum to a 300m section of Molongle Creek that burst its banks during the 2019 flood event.
It threatened a road and other infrastructure and needed to be fixed urgently.
In collaboration with Alluvium Consulting, they designed a solution that would work in the longterm, provide natural redundancy once the ‘quick fix’ was secure and encouraged nature to ensure the solution remained in place.
Pile fields were employed, driving almost 4000 timber poles four metres into the ground where the streambank had been carried away.
When the next flush of rain filled the creek, the pile fields slowed the water flowing past and, thanks to their ‘hook’ design, the water eddied around them and deposited sediment and organic detritus, including some large tree trunks.
Alluvium Consulting Project Manager and Environmental Management Specialist Jason Carter said having done the job of providing a place for vegetation to take root, the timber piles would inevitably succumb to borers, rot and fall away leaving behind the repaired streambank.
Gary Spotswood, whose family has been farming on the same block of land since 1927 has long-term strategies to ensure the generations following him (fourth and fifth) will have a healthy, properly functioning wetland (more than 60ha) in the landscape.
Enlisting the help of NQ Dry Tropics Waterways, Wetlands and Coasts Team Leader Scott Fry, Gary has plans to allow the wetland to dry down, killing the dominant weed species and allowing nature to reset and refresh the area when the next flood pulse arrives.
Paddock to Reef modelling
Chief Scientific Officer from the Queensland Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI) Carl Mitchell told the forum the Paddock to Reef Integrated Monitoring, Modelling and Reporting Program (P2R) was adopting a more strategic approach.
He said modelling was complex and was reliant on data to help people in the field make decisions, often on landscape or catchment scale, trying to improve the water quality flowing to the Great Barrier Reef.
Since the program was devised 17 years ago, it had been reviewed every five years.
“We need to think strategically about how the program would be used in, say, 20 years from now,” he said.
COLLABORATIVE
The field trip visits and presentations that followed after lunch all touched on collaboration in some way.
Cultural fire
NQ Dry Tropics’ Cultural Fire Management Project Officer Trinity Georgetown and Gudjuda Reference Group Chair Eddie Smallwood spoke about NQ Dry Tropics’ Cultural Fire Program to open the afternoon session of the forum.
The program was developed at the request of the Traditional Owner Management Group and seeks to engage with landholders to try to reintroduce fire as a management tool.
Trinity said following workshops at Belamahar at St Margaret’s Creek, Giru and at Jervoise Station, Greenvale, several graziers had expressed an interest in learning more about reintroducing fire as a pasture management tool.
Trinity said the project was also an opportunity to rekindle old skills around cultural fire like reading Country and to develop new skills such as establishing camera traps for monitoring.
The NQ Dry Tropics team has delivered workshops in collaboration with the Firesticks Alliance and Rural Fire Service Queensland.
TARGETED
NQ Dry Tropics Sustainable Agriculture Program Manager Rob Hunt, summing up the forum, made the point that the collection of data needed to be targeted.
“We really need to know what we’re measuring,” he said.
“Whether it’s to make sure our models are right, or to ensure a project is delivering what it’s meant to deliver, or properly understanding the co-benefits arising from a project, we need to be able to map those out and understand what we’re measuring.”
DETSI researcher and modeller Mel Shaw said the quality of data and processes in their models were constantly being tested to ensure best-possible accuracy.
She cited physically testing mill mud from different regions (each with different carbon to nitrogen ratios) to measure the mineralisation.
“Then we run the models and they actually track pretty closely,” she said.
“These types of experiments are important for us to be able to validate that the results we get out of our model are sensible.”
Senior Scientist and principal at C2O Consulting Jane Waterhouse outlined the criteria for prioritising the focus and extent of investment across the 35 basins feeding into the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon.
“We have a good evidence base and a long understanding of the influence of runoff to the Great Barrier Reef,” Jane said.
She said the extent of that influence varied with the northern sections of the reef closer to land being more likely to be affected even by minor events.
Jane said prioritisation included giving attention to small-scale interventions, as well as the moderate and large-scale sites, possibly stretching across multiple land uses.
Prioritisation was a part of ensuring investment was targeted for the best result.
“We also want managers and investors to think about protecting the areas in good condition ensuring we are taking action if necessary to maintain good water quality,” she said.
Naturally, more intensive action would be required in those areas with exposure to higher levels of pollutants and that would be part of the whole-of-system framework approach now being adopted.
SELECTIVE
NQ Dry Tropics Sustainable Agriculture Program Manager Rob Hunt pointed out that it was impossible in a highly-modified landscape to return systems to pristine condition.
“You can’t fix everything,” he said.
“We now have a production landscape. There’s irrigation water running through wetlands and cattle drinking from streambanks.”
What we’re trying to do is to manage those systems so they retain form and function and deliver ecosystem services and the production and social and cultural outcomes we value.
EMISSIONS
New to this year’s science forum was the topic of emissions and two speakers — Wilmar Sugar and Renewables’ Agricultural Productivity Manager Peter Larsen and Nutrien Ag Solutions’ Sustainable Ag Field Manager Charles Starkings — addressed that subject .
Peter Larsen manages Wilmar Sugar and Renewables 3800ha of sugar cane in the Lower Burdekin making him the biggest cane farmer in the country.
In conjunction with the NQ Dry Tropics – SRA Consortium Burdekin Irrigation Project, several experiments were conducted to measure greenhouse gas emissions.
They measured greenhouse emissions using standard practices in fertiliser placement and flow rate of water (1 litre per second for 24 hours) down the furrows compared to an increased flow rate (3.6 litres per second for six hours).
Peter said no discernible difference was found in methane gas emissions, but the higher flow rate did result in a reduction of more than 30 per cent of nitrogen gas being lost to the atmosphere.
Nutrien Ag Solutions Sustainable Ag Manager Charles Starkings said the key to the burgeoning carbon emissions market was to take data and turn it into practical advice.
He showed two ways in which farmers changing their emissions could create opportunities in the carbon market.
Using a typical Queensland beef enterprise as an example he showed how farmers could improve their emissions ratings by adopting practices to increase production without a comparable increase in inputs.
Switching to sugar cane, he cited a reduction in nitrogen applied to crops with no reduction in yield as another way of creating a carbon market opportunity.
“I would expect to see something within the sugar industry sooner than most sectors based on the cost of abatement,” he said.
The forum, hosted by NQ Dry Tropics, was funded by the Australian and Queensland governments’ Paddock to Reef Integrated Monitoring, Modelling and Reporting Program (Paddock to Reef program).
