Townsville Laboratory

The staff at CSIRO Land and Water's Townsville Laboratory have studied the plant-soil-animal interactions in the tropical environment of northern Australia. Early studies were concerned with soil mapping of tropical Queensland for the Atlas of Australian Soils project, followed by morphological and chemical studies of a number of important soil groups. During the 1970s and 1980s fundamental studies were made on the charge properties of the highly weathered soils characteristic of the high rainfall north coastal zone, and pedological, hydrological, biological and plant nutritional studies of representative semi-arid soils inland from Townsville.

Modern natural resource management requires a whole of system approach to gain sustainable solutions to water quality and catchment management challenges within North Queensland. Staff at the Davies Laboratory are positioned to undertake appropriate research to assist with improving water quality, wetland integrity and fisheries while enhancing agricultural productivity – all goals of the Great Barrier Reef Water Quality Protection Plan.

Balancing the needs of rural industries with environmental concerns will continue to be the focus of work undertaken at the Davies Laboratory. To meet this objective research ranges from localised farm or paddock focus to broader catchment and regional scale.

CSIRO Land and Water in Townsville houses research staff in research themes of:

• Agriculture, Water & Environment
• Rivers and Coasts
• Environmental Sensing Prediction & Reporting

Research staff are concentrating their research efforts on:

• River and Irrigation Hydrology
• Water quality & environmental flows
• Spatial Analysis
• Prediction & Reporting Technologies

Research staff are also involved in the following research activities:

• Northern Australia Irrigation Futures project
• Water for a Healthy Country Flagship
• Burdekin water quality and salinity management
• Floodplain and wetland hydrology
• Water quality monitoring
• Soil and erosion management
• Soil acidification
• Sustainable catchment grazing
• Viability of agriculture regions

To carry out this research, the Davies Laboratory has facilities for: 

• soil chemical analysis including atomic absorption spectrometer and autoanalyser 
• geographic information systems 
• local-area and wide-area networked computing 
• drill rig for deep drilling and large coring.