Schaffelke et al., 2007:

"Monthly and annual freshwater discharges were estimated from the 10 Reef Plan MMP priority rivers plus the Mulgrave, Russell and South Johnstone Rivers, which collectively influence near shore water quality in major focus areas of marine water quality monitoring (Tables 2.4 to 2.6). Records of daily discharge (megalitres) and 30-minute instantaneous flow (cumecs) were provided by DNRMW for interpretation and integration of Mudlogger data sets. These data records have been incorporated into the Reef Plan MMP river mouth monitoring database maintained by AIMS and delivered as part of the contract.

Overall, 2006-07 was a wetter year than either 2004-05 or 2005-06, despite the occurrence of Tropical Cyclone Larry in March 2006. Estimates of annual discharge totals are provisional at the time of writing as flow data from all of June 2007 has not been reported for a number of river systems. Nonetheless, annual discharges for individual river and aggregate annual discharges in all three years were low compared to the long-term (1969-95) average discharges for the individual rivers and their aggregate discharge. The aggregate 2006-07 discharge was only 63 per cent of the long-term average for these rivers, though this was up from 48 per cent in 2005-06. Much of the wet season freshwater discharge from rivers other than the Burnett was concentrated in the relatively brief period of rainfall between late January and mid February 2007, though there was significant freshwater discharge from wet tropics rivers and the Burdekin late in the wet season. The largest single discharge events (7.56 and 1.27 km3) were recorded in the Burdekin and Herbert Rivers, respectively. In all cases, Mudloggers were recovered prior to the extensive rains and winter flows of June-July 2007."

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Citation and/or URL

Schaffelke, B., Thompson, A., Carleton, J., De’ath, G., Feather, G., Furnas, M., Neale, S., Skuza, M., Thomson, D., Sweatman, H., and Zagorskis, I., 2007 Water Quality and Ecosystem Monitoring Program Reef Water Quality Protection Plan - Final Report, Australian Institute of Marine Science, 6-31.

Spatial Coverage

Reef-wide

Temporal Coverage

2004-2007

Update Frequency

Annual

Other Information

None