<i>eReefs</i>: An operational information system for managing the Great Barrier Reef

Steven, Andrew D. L.; Baird, Mark E.; Brinkman, Richard; Car, Nicholas J.; Cox, Simon J.; Herzfeld, Mike; Hodge, Jonathan; Jones, Emlyn; King, E. A.; Margvelashvili, Nugzar; Robillot, Cédric; Robson, Barbara; Schroeder, Thomas; Skerratt, Jennifer; Tickell, Sharon; Tuteja, Narendra; Wild-Allen, Karen; Yu, Jonathan

doi:10.1080/1755876x.2019.1650589

Cited by 46 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…1) currently monitored by the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) National Reference Station (NRS) Network 41 . In contrast, an extensive reef water quality program has been implemented for the GBR with the contextual data publicly available within the eReefs platform 68 . eReefs integrates a hydrodynamic model (predicting key environmental conditions such as temperature and salinity) and a biogeochemical model (water chemistry and ecological processes driving the water chemistry) to generate estimates with a high spatial and temporal resolution for a vast variety of environmental conditions across the GBR, from inshore reefs to the open ocean.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial patterns of microbial communities across surface waters of the Great Barrier Reef

et al. 2020

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Microorganisms are fundamental drivers of biogeochemical cycling, though their contribution to coral reef ecosystem functioning is poorly understood. Here, we infer predictors of bacterioplankton community dynamics across surface-waters of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) through a meta-analysis, combining microbial with environmental data from the eReefs platform. Nutrient dynamics and temperature explained 41.4% of inter-seasonal and crossshelf variation in bacterial assemblages. Bacterial families OCS155, Cryomorphaceae, Flavobacteriaceae, Synechococcaceae and Rhodobacteraceae dominated inshore reefs and their relative abundances positively correlated with nutrient loads. In contrast, Prochlorococcaceae negatively correlated with nutrients and became increasingly dominant towards outershelf reefs. Cyanobacteria in Prochlorococcaceae and Synechococcaceae families occupy complementary cross-shelf biogeochemical niches; their abundance ratios representing a potential indicator of GBR nutrient levels. One Flavobacteriaceae-affiliated taxa was putatively identified as diagnostic for ecosystem degradation. Establishing microbial observatories along GBR environmental gradients will facilitate robust assessments of microbial contributions to reef health and inform tipping-points in reef condition.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial patterns of microbial communities across surface waters of the Great Barrier Reef

et al. 2020

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“…A large, multi-agency collaboration has developed the eReefs coupled hydrodynamic, sediment and biogeochemical model that simulates at multiple scales the environmental conditions of the GBR [ 17 , 18 ]. The project provides ∼1 and ∼4 km resolution hindcast and near real time simulations of hydrodynamic and biogeochemical quantities.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimising cool-water injections to reduce thermal stress on coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef

et al. 2020

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Coral bleaching driven by ocean warming is one of the most visible ecological impacts of climate change and perhaps the greatest threat to the persistence of reefs in the coming decades. In the absence of returning atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to those compatible with ocean temperatures below the mass coral bleaching temperature thresholds, the most straightforward means to reduce thermal-stress induced bleaching is to cool water at the seabed. The feasibility of reducing the seabed temperature through cool-water injections is considered first by analysing the feasibility of doing so on 19 reefs with differing physical environments using a simple residence time metric in 200 m resolution hydrodynamic model configurations. We then concentrate on the reefs around Lizard Island, the most promising candidate of the 19 locations, and develop a 40 m hydrodynamic model to investigate the effect of the injection of cool water at differing volumetric rates. Injecting 27˚C seawater at a rate of 5 m 3 s −1 at 4 sites in early 2017 cooled 97 ha of the reef by 0.15˚C or more. The power required to pump 5 m 3 s −1 through a set of pipes over a distance of 3 km from a nearby channel is *466 kW. This power applied at 4 sites for 3 months achieves a 2 Degree Heating Weeks (DHWs) reduction on 97 ha of reef. A more precise energy costing will require further expert engineering design of the pumping equipment and energy sources. Even for the most physically favourable reefs, cool-water transported through pipes and injected at a reef site is energy expensive and cannot be scaled up to any meaningful fraction of the 3,100 reefs of the GBR. Should priority be given to reducing thermal stress on one or a few high value reefs, this paper provides a framework to identify the most promising sites.

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“…The MODIS AQUA based aerosol data set was produced using a three-layer perceptron ANN trained by simulations of a coupled ocean-atmosphere radiative transfer model. An earlier version of the method can be found in [44,45] for MERIS, which was further developed as part of the CSIRO eReefs project [46] where it was extended to MODIS and VIIRS. Specific details of this aerosol data, as well as validations, are available in [23].…”

Section: Landsat 8 Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing an Atmospheric Correction Algorithm for Time Series of Satellite-Based Water-Leaving Reflectance Using Match-Up Sites in Australian Coastal Waters

Jupp

Schroeder

et al. 2021

Remote Sensing

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An atmospheric correction algorithm for medium-resolution satellite data over general water surfaces (open/coastal, estuarine and inland waters) has been assessed in Australian coastal waters. In situ measurements at four match-up sites were used with 21 Landsat 8 images acquired between 2014 and 2017. Three aerosol sources (AERONET, MODIS ocean aerosol and climatology) were used to test the impact of the selection of aerosol optical depth (AOD) and Ångström coefficient on the retrieved accuracy. The initial results showed that the satellite-derived water-leaving reflectance can have good agreement with the in situ measurements, provided that the sun glint is handled effectively. Although the AERONET aerosol data performed best, the contemporary satellite-derived aerosol information from MODIS or an aerosol climatology could also be as effective, and should be assessed with further in situ measurements. Two sun glint correction strategies were assessed for their ability to remove the glint bias. The most successful one used the average of two shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands to represent sun glint and subtracted it from each band. Using this sun glint correction method, the mean all-band error of the retrieved water-leaving reflectance at the Lucinda Jetty Coastal Observatory (LJCO) in north east Australia was close to 4% and unbiased over 14 acquisitions. A persistent bias in the other strategy was likely due to the sky radiance being non-uniform for the selected images. In regard to future options for an operational sun glint correction, the simple method may be sufficient for clear skies until a physically based method has been established.

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eReefs: An operational information system for managing the Great Barrier Reef

Cited by 46 publications

References 32 publications

Spatial patterns of microbial communities across surface waters of the Great Barrier Reef

Spatial patterns of microbial communities across surface waters of the Great Barrier Reef

Optimising cool-water injections to reduce thermal stress on coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef

Assessing an Atmospheric Correction Algorithm for Time Series of Satellite-Based Water-Leaving Reflectance Using Match-Up Sites in Australian Coastal Waters

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