Publications about Great Barrier Reef

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Great Barrier Reef Report Card Summary - 2009 Baseline (Page 1)

Great Barrier Reef Report Card Summary - 2009 Baseline

Bill Dennison, Heath Kelsey, Jane Thomas, Melissa Andreychek ·
12 August 2011

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest and best-known coral reef ecosystem in the world. This first report card provides an estimate of the status of the key indicators for the period preceding 2009. It is based on historical data and trends and takes into account the influence of a variable climate from year to year. This serves as a baseline that will be used as a point of comparison to measure progress towards Reef Plan goals and targets.

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Great Barrier Reef Report Card Regional Summaries - 2009 Baseline (Page 1)

Great Barrier Reef Report Card Regional Summaries - 2009 Baseline

Bill Dennison, Heath Kelsey, Jane Thomas, Melissa Andreychek ·
12 August 2011

This document contains report card summaries for the Cape York, Wet Tropics, Burdekin, Mackay-Whitsunday, Fitzroy, and Burnett-Mary regions. Each section details the region profile, and key findings, as well as summarizing the report card results for land practices, catchment indicators and loads, and the marine parameters; water quality, seagrass, and corals. It also describes positive actions in the regions to improve ecosystem health.

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Great Barrier Reef Technical Report Card - 2009 Baseline (Page 1)

Great Barrier Reef Technical Report Card - 2009 Baseline

Bill Dennison, Heath Kelsey, Jane Thomas, Melissa Andreychek ·
12 August 2011

The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area is renowned internationally for its ecological importance and beauty. However, despite it being one of the best managed coral reefs in the world there is a very real risk of damage to the reef from climate change. This technical document details all aspects of the report card process. It includes sections on management, methods, and detailed results for all regions.

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Creating a Shared Vision for the Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac Region (Page 1)

Creating a Shared Vision for the Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac Region

Bill Dennison ·
1 June 2011

The Mackay-Whitsundays-Isaac region is diverse, with rainforests, ranges, creeks and rivers, wetlands, beaches, islands and reefs which support high biodiversity. The region supports productive agriculture, particularly grazing and sugarcane, as well as expanding urban centres. The Mackay-Whitsundays-Isaac region is rapidly developing due to economic development, climate, livability and natural beauty. This region is expected to double in population within twenty five years.

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Reef Plan Monitoring: Marine Water Quality Impacts (Page 1)

Reef Plan Monitoring: Marine Water Quality Impacts

Bill Dennison, Ben Longstaff, Jane Thomas ·
2 March 2008

The Marine Monitoring Program is a long-term water quality and ecosystem heath monitoring program carried out in the inshore region of the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon. The program is an integral component of the Reef Water Quality Protection Plan, that will help to assess the long-term effectiveness of Reef Plan in reversing decline in the quality of water entering the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

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Organochlorine and heavy metal concentrations in blubber and liver tissue collected from Queensland (Australia) dugong (Dugong dugon) (Page 1)

Organochlorine and heavy metal concentrations in blubber and liver tissue collected from Queensland (Australia) dugong (Dugong dugon)

Haynes D, Carter S, Gaus C, Muller J, and Dennison WC ·
2005

Tissue samples of liver and blubber were salvaged from fifty-three dugong (Dugong dugon) carcasses stranded along the Queensland coast between 1996 and 2000. Liver tissue was analysed for a range of heavy metals and blubber samples were analysed for organochlorine compounds. Metal concentrations were similar in male and female animals and were generally highest in mature animals.

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Combining Landsat ETM plus and Reef Check classifications for mapping coral reefs: A critical assessment from the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia (Page 1)

Combining Landsat ETM plus and Reef Check classifications for mapping coral reefs: A critical assessment from the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Joyce KE, Phinn SR, Roelfsema CM, Neil DT, and Dennison WC ·
2004

While the remote-sensing community attempts to find measures of reef ‘‘health’’ able to be detected and mapped using satellite image data, internationally recognized field assessments are already in place to document benthic cover, among other parameters, as an indicator of coral reef status. Reef Check is one such program, designed in 1996 as a globally applicable, rapid, field-survey protocol for coral reef health monitoring by volunteer divers (Hodgson 1999).

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Nitrogen ecophysiology of Heron Island, a subtropical coral cay of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia (Page 1)

Nitrogen ecophysiology of Heron Island, a subtropical coral cay of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Schmidt S, Dennison WC, Moss GJ, and Stewart GR ·
2004

Coral cays form part of the Australian Great Barrier Reef. Coral cays with high densities of seabirds are areas of extreme nitrogen (N) enrichment with deposition rates of up to 1000 kg N ha(-1) y(-1). The ways in which N sources are utilised by coral cay plants, N is distributed within the cay, and whether or not seabird-derived N moves from cay to surrounding marine environments were investigated.

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