Catchment to Reef Research Group

The Catchment to Reef Processes Research Group is one of Australia’s leading research groups in the study of environmental issues along the ‘catchment to reef continuum’, from the headwaters of the GBR catchments to the outer reef. Research undertaken by the group includes tracing the sources of pollutants (sediments, nutrients and pesticides) from different land uses (i.e. cattle grazing, sugar cane, horticulture and urban) within catchments, the transport and dispersal of land-based pollutants in coastal and marine environments, the environmental, social and economic impacts of plastic pollution, the quantification of pollutant loads to the GBR lagoon from end-of-catchment monitoring and coral core proxy records, the exposure and risk of land-based pollutants to coastal wetland, mangrove, seagrass and coral reef ecosystem and the modeling of ecohydrological and oceanographic processes in estuaries and the GBR.