Passive River Tracer Results for 35 Great Barrier Reef Rivers

Aggregating passive river tracer results for 35 significant rivers, derived from the eReefs 4km-resolution hydrodynamic model of the Great Barrier Reef. The model is forced with atmospheric, ocean boundary, tidal, and river data, and supports calculations for the Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan Reef Report Cards.

Use Cases

• Analyze passive tracer dispersion patterns from 35 significant rivers to model pollutant transport in the Great Barrier Reef.
• Assess the contribution of river boundaries, forced by measured stream flow and temperature data, to regional water quality metrics.
• Validate hydrodynamic model outputs against the Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan targets using the derived tracer results.
• Study the influence of ocean boundaries from the BRAN2020 model on tracer fate and residence times in coastal zones.

Strengths

• Derived from a 4km-resolution regional-scale hydrodynamic model, providing detailed spatial coverage of the Great Barrier Reef.
• Includes results for 35 rivers specifically identified as significant for the Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan.
• Model is forced with multiple high-quality inputs, including BARRA atmospheric reanalysis and BRAN2020 ocean boundary data.
• The model configuration is complete and described as the best available eReefs river tracer model for its timespan.

Limitations

• The dataset is delivered in HTML and PNG formats, which are not standard for quantitative analysis and may require data extraction.
• Specific data dimensions (rows, columns), temporal coverage, and file sizes are not provided, limiting assessment of scope.
• As a hindcast model, the data reflects past conditions and may not represent current or future hydrodynamic states.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, via the eReefs modeling initiative.

Collection Method

Derived from version 4.0 of the eReefs 4km-resolution regional-scale hydrodynamic model (GBR4), forced with BARRA atmospheric data, BRAN2020 ocean boundaries, TPXO tides, and river data from G2Gv3 and QLD DES Source models.

Freshness

The metadata was last updated on 2026-03-21, but the underlying model is a complete hindcast run.

Geography

Great Barrier Reef region, focusing on 35 significant rivers.