How the Major Integrated Projects (including Landholders Driving Change) came about
The design phase of the project followed on from the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) Water Science Taskforce recommending two major integrated projects (MIPs) in its final report released in May 2016 (GBR Water Science Taskforce, 2016).
The Queensland Government, through the Office of the Great Barrier Reef (OGBR) within the Department of the Environment and Heritage Protection (DEHP), agreed to implement the recommendation to reduce nutrient, sediment and pesticide loads in the Wet Tropics and Burdekin regions.
The MIPs aimed to concentrate interventions and management efforts at a catchment scale and fully evaluate their effectiveness in improving water quality.
The approach was trialled in two regions to test whether it was effective and suitable for broader application. In the Wet Tropics, the project engaged with cane and banana growers within the Tully and Johnstone catchments to develop a strategy to reduce nutrient and pesticide run-off. In the Burdekin, the project engaged with graziers in the Bowen-Broken-Bogie (BBB) catchment to develop a strategy to reduce sediment and associated particulate nutrient run-off.
In recognition of the grassroots involvement from design phase on, the Burdekin project was dubbed the Landholders Driving Change project.
The MIPs delivered a mix of tools and interventions during a three-year period (that, with other funding, becamse nine years) in a focused and integrated way in known hot spot areas for nutrients, sediments and pesticides.
Examples of tools and interventions cited during the design phase included one-on-one extension, peer to peer learning, trialling and promoting innovative agricultural practices, remediation actions, customised incentives, stewardship payments and systems repair works.
These projects built on and integrated with existing activities to maximise efficiencies and outcomes.
The MIPs tested the efficacy of a strategic integrated and comprehensive engagement and behavioural change process.
As a pilot program, the MIPs evaluated and communicated the environmental, economic and social benefits and corresponding costs (in terms of investment required). Successful approaches could then be appropriately applied across GBR catchments.
Graziers and local communities in hot spot areas were engaged in designing, delivering and evaluating the projects.
The MIPs provided an opportunity to design and deliver a range of interventions to improve water quality from the ground up, in a focused and tailored way; while also testing the effectiveness of this approach and adapting it as needed during the project.
Building on the science and learnings developed during the past decade or more of delivering reef water quality programs, the regions are now in an ideal position to implement this approach.
Scope and objectives
Determining the scope and objectives of the Landholders Driving Change project
THE Burdekin River Basin is ~130,000 km2 and drains into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon south of Townsville.
It has the largest mean annual runoff of any of the GBR catchments at 10,290,000ML, and is the largest contributor of anthropogenic derived fine sediment to the GBR lagoon (Waters et al., 2014; McCloskey et al., 2017a,b).
The Burdekin River and its catchment influences large areas of coastal floodplains and important wetland areas, coral reefs and seagrass beds. Many of these systems are vulnerable to increases in sediment and particulate loads in the environment.
Flood plume studies have found most sediment exported from the Burdekin Basin is deposited close to the river mouth, coastal and inner shelf areas of the GBR, with potential for remobilisation during subsequent wind and tide driven resuspension events (Bainbridge et al., 2016; Lewis et al., 2015).
These resuspension events can result in higher turbidity levels than measured in initial flood plumes. Elevated turbidity reduces light for seagrass and corals.
While coastal seagrass and coral reefs do grow in turbid water conditions at shallow depths, this has contributed to declines in seagrass extent (McKenzie et al., 2016) and reduced coral biodiversity (De’ath and Fabricius, 2010) throughout the GBR.
Within the Burdekin River Basin there are several large catchments, and there are now multiple lines of evidence showing that the BBB catchment, which is downstream of the Burdekin Falls Dam, is the dominant source of sediment and particulate nitrogen to the GBR (Lewis et al., 2015; Bartley et al., 2014), contributing approximately 43 per cent of the regional sediment load.
This catchment has some of the highest sediment concentrations and one of the highest per-hectare sediment loads of any catchment draining to the GBR lagoon (Dougall et al., 2014), and these erosion rates are ~7.5 higher than natural (Bartley et al., 2015).
The dominant erosion process driving this excess sediment delivery is gully erosion (Wilkinson et al. 2015; Hancock et al. 2014), and a large proportion of the sediment is generated from grazing lands. Accordingly, the Burdekin Water Quality Improvement Plan (Burdekin WQIP; NQ Dry Tropics, 2016) identifies the BBB as the highest priority catchment for sediment loss in the Burdekin Basin.
Within the BBB catchment, most of the sediment load is delivered from a relatively small proportion of the area, which has vulnerable soils that are hydrologically well‐connected to the stream network.
These are primarily where subsoil is exposed in scalds, rills and gullies (Wilkinson et al., 2015; Brooks et al., 2016). These features can be identified in the landscape, but the critical gap in our understanding is the effectiveness of erosion remediation options for controlling these sources of sediment at property and sub-catchment scales.
BBB catchment
Overview of the BBB catchment
THIS is an overview of the characteristics of the BBB catchment relevant to the design of the Burdekin MIP (BMIP). A Synthesis Report (refer Volume V) provides more detailed information on the BBB catchment. In summary:
- The BBB catchment covers an area of 11,718 km2, which is 8.3 per cent of the Burdekin River Basin.
- The dominant land use is grazing (92 per cent). Designated conservation areas, including national park and state forest, exist in the southern ridges of the Broken sub-catchment (8 per cent of total Catchment area). There is significant open-cut mining (coal) operating in the region, particularly around the town of Collinsville.
- There are 71 grazing properties (either located partially or fully) in the BBB catchment, of which 63 grazing enterprises are more than 2000ha, and of these, five are owned by mining companies (300,000ha) and one by the Indigenous Land Council. Two properties are owned by government (100,000ha).
- Tenure in the catchment is dominated by leasehold land (73 per cent), with around 16 per cent freehold land.
- The BBB catchment sits across four regional council areas. A majority of the catchment is within the Whitsunday Regional Council area, with a small proportion of the Bogie sub-catchment in the Burdekin Shire Council area, a small area of the Little Bowen River sub-catchment within the Isaac Regional Council area, and small parts of the Broken River sub-catchment in the Mackay Regional Council area.
- The BBB catchment includes parts of the Bowen Broken Bogie Geological basin. As at December 2015, there were four operating coal mines in the Pelican Creek and Rosella Creek sub-catchments, and one operating gold mine in the Bogie sub-catchment. There are also seven unidentified operating mines Department of Natural Resources and Mines (DNRM), ‘Mines on line’ accessed, 2015; business.qld.gov.au/industry/mining/mining-online-services/mines-online) and 119 abandoned mines in the catchment.
- The major population centre is Collinsville/Scottville, with an estimated population of 1,830 people (Queensland Government Statisticians Office, 2016). A sewage treatment plant (<5,000 equivalent persons) services the centre, discharging ~0.33 ML per day of treated wastewater to Pelican Creek. The public water supply is from the Bowen River Weir.
- The BBB catchment can be divided into seven major sub-catchments including the Bogie River, Bowen River, Broken River, Glenmore Creek, Little Bowen River, Pelican Creek and Rosella Creek. Waterways vary between largely sandy, dry ephemeral creek systems to permanently flowing clearwater rivers and creeks that originate in mountain rainforest.
- Among the BBB sub-catchments, the modelling indicates that the rate of erosion is particularly high in the Bowen River, Little Bowen, Bogie and Pelican Creek sub-catchments. The estimates for the Broken River sub-catchment are considered to be an overestimate in the model due to limitations in estimating the cover factor in forested areas (C. Dougall, pers. comm.) and should not be ranked as a priority sub-catchment for sediment management.
