Publications

Devlin, MJ; McKinna, LW; Alvarez-Romero, JG; Petus, C; Abott, B; Harkness, P; Brodie, J (2012). Mapping the pollutants in surface riverine flood plume waters in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. MARINE POLLUTION BULLETIN, 65(9-Apr), 224-235.

Abstract
The extent of flood plume water over a 10 year period was mapped using quasi-true colour imagery and used to calculate long-term frequency of occurrence of the plumes. The proportional contribution of riverine loads of dissolved inorganic nitrogen, total suspended sediments and qPhotosystem-II herbicides from each catchment was used to scale the surface exposure maps for each pollutant. A classification procedure was also applied to satellite imagery (only Wet Tropics region) during 11 flood events (2000-2010) through processing of level-2 ocean colour products to discriminate the changing characteristics across three water types: "primary plume water", characterised by high TSS values; "secondary plume water", characterised by high phytoplankton production as measured by elevated chlorophyll-a (chl-a), and "tertiary plume water", characterised by elevated coloured dissolved and detrital matter (CDOM + D). This classification is a first step to characterise flood plumes. Crown Copyright (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

DOI:
0025-326X

ISSN:
10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.03.001