Fitzroy Estuary-Keppel Bay: Agricultural Contaminants and Water Quality

The Fitzroy Estuary-Keppel Bay system in Queensland, Australia, is the focus of this dataset from the Fitzroy Agricultural Contaminants Project. It was created by the Coastal CRC and Geoscience Australia to understand the fate of nutrients and sediments from the Fitzroy River, which delivers the second-largest quantity of such materials to the Great Barrier Reef lagoon. The data likely contains measurements of physical and biogeochemical processes relevant to near-shore reef ecosystem health.

Use Cases

• Modeling the transport and fate of agricultural contaminants based on catchment-derived nutrient and sediment discharge data.
• Assessing the impact of riverine inputs on near-shore reef ecosystems based on biogeochemical measurements.
• Comparing contaminant loads from different river systems based on the relative ranking of the Fitzroy and Burdekin Rivers.

Strengths

• Data originates from a specific, named research project (Fitzroy Agricultural Contaminants Project) under the Coastal CRC.
• Focuses on a major contributor to Great Barrier Reef lagoon contaminants, the Fitzroy River, which is described as the second-largest source after the Burdekin.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au, focusing on a single Australian estuary system.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Likely contains field measurements and/or modeling outputs from the Fitzroy Agricultural Contaminants Project.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-20 02:45:29.622115; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Fitzroy Estuary and Keppel Bay, Queensland, Australia, impacting the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.