Modelling groundwater transport of nutrients and herbicides
Actions aimed at mitigating the transport of nitrogen, phosphorus and PSII herbicides to the Great Barrier Reef have focused on surface water processes and pathways of delivery. Understanding sub-surface transport processes will help evaluate options for on-farm management to minimise and mitigate groundwater contamination.
The following conceptual models to help understand these processes were developed as part of Reef Water Quality’s science project RP51C: Groundwater delivery of nutrients and PSII-active herbicides to the reef and the potential for on-farm mitigation.
- Overview of transport, transformation and attenuation processes
- Depth locator
- Lower Burdekin aquifer cross-section
- Pioneer Valley aquifer cross-section
- Lower Herbert aquifer cross-section
- Stream and aquifer connectivity
- Nitrogen processes in the root zone
- Subsurface fate of nitrogen
- Denitrification in riparian and hyporheic zones
- Nitrogen attenuation potential in the transition zone
- Phosphorus processes in the root zone
- Subsurface fate of phosphorus
- Phosphorus attenuation potential in the transition zone
- Herbicide processes in the root zone
- Subsurface fate of herbicides
- Nitrogen, phosphorus and herbicides in groundwater flows to the reef
