Perth Laboratory – Public Seminar Series 2010

Understanding and modelling flow, nutrients and benthic plants in a perennial tropical river

Dr Barbara Robson
CSIRO Land and Water

Thursday 21 January 2010 at 3.30pm, CSIRO Auditorium

Abstract
Many of Australia's tropical rivers are relatively pristine in comparison with their temperate counterparts, but also relatively little studied. Now, however, there is pressure for further development of tropical land and water resources. The TRaCK (Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge) consortium is working to improve our understanding of these systems and improve our ability to manage and predict their responses to change. As part of this programme, we have studied flow, nutrients, and primary production in the Daly River (N.T.), a perennial tropical river maintained in the dry season by ground-water. In the dry season, the waters of the Daly River are clear and oligotrophic (low in nutrients). Primary production is dominated by benthic algae and macrophytes, and growth is limited by nitrogen and phosphorus availability and flow-dependent flux rates across a benthic boundary layer. Flow also controls the rate of loss due to sloughing of algal biomass at relatively low velocities and scouring of the river bed at higher velocities. This seminar will describe work to understand and model these dynamics, and will discuss what this might mean for the river's future.

About the speaker
Dr Robson joined CSIRO Land and Water as a Research Scientist in 2002. Before that, she was a Research Associate at the Centre for Water Research, University of Western Australia. Her main research interest is process-based modelling of nutrients, sediments and plants (especially phytoplankton) in aquatic systems such as rivers and estuaries. Dr Robson uses models to draw together scientific understanding of a system, quantify process rates and material fluxes, and predict how the system is likely to respond to change.

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