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Project details
| Title: | Quaternary evolution of the Darumbal and Woppaburra Sea Country in the Southern Great Barrier Reef |
| Id: | 2673 |
| Investigator(s): | Helen Bostock
University of Queensland [details] |
| Description: | 1) Characterise the Quaternary evolution of Darumbal and close neighbour Woppaburra Sea Country and integrate with traditional knowledge to contribute to understanding the cultural heritage values of the SGBR. 2) Assess the Quaternary evolution and development of the coral reefs in the SGBR. 3) Study the interaction of the modern ocean currents with the reefs and seascape of the SGBR – to help validate and improve eReefs models. 4) Atmospheric measurements for the SGBR will contribute to the Reef Restoration Adaptation Project (RRAP) |
| Description (full): | 1) Characterise the Quaternary evolution of Darumbal and close neighbour Woppaburra Sea Country and integrate with traditional knowledge to contribute to understanding the cultural heritage values of the SGBR. Previous research in the region has identified geomorophological features, such as river channels, estuary, beach ridges. The objective of this voyage is to systematically survey the GBR lagoon at water depths of 40-200 m, which were previously exposed as a coastal plain. Developing new geomorphological maps of the seafloor and the sub-surface will provide new maps of the sea country and how it has evolved over the past 60,000 years. These geomorphological features will be sampled to provide dates and paleo-vegetation reconstructions of the coastal plain and sea level rise. Working with the Darumbal and Woppaburra TUMRA sea country rangers and elders we will integrate traditional owners’ cultural knowledge of the region with the new geomorphological data. 2) Assess the Quaternary evolution and development of the coral reefs in the SGBR. The modern coral reefs of the Great Barrier Reef initiated around 9000 years ago when sea level reached close to the modern day. However, there is evidence from the central GBR that the reefs did not go extinct during lower sea levels, instead they shifted down slope with the sea level and continued to exist when sea level was 120 m below present on a series of terraces (Webster et al., 2018). Previous voyages in the SGBR have mapped a series of terraces at ~120 m below present offshore the Swains and Capricorn Bunker group reefs (McNeil et al., 2020). These will be sampled to ground-truth their origin to understand how the coral reefs in this region evolved over the last Quaternary. Longer sediment cores offshore provide continuous temporal records of reef development (Bostock et al., 2009). This is also of interest to the Darumbal and Woppaburra who utilise a wide range of resources from the reefs, and help to manage the modern reefs and ecosystems in their TUMRA. 3) Study the interaction of the modern ocean currents with the reefs and seascape of the SGBR – to help validate and improve eReefs models. There have been few dedicated voyages or oceanography research on the SGBR (Burrage and Kleypas 1994; Middleton 1990; Burrage and Kleypas 1994; Weeks et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2014) and the limited observational data from satellites and a couple of moorings limit the testing and validation of the CSIRO eReefs Model that is used by the GBRMPA to manage the area. There is limited information of subsurface processes (uplift – upwelling that doesn’t reach the surface). The exchange of water between the East Australian Current which flows around the Swain Reefs and the influence of the Capricorn Eddy, a lee eddy in the Capricorn Channel, is poorly studied. Based on the limited data and the eReefs model this region has been proposed as a potential refugia for coral reefs under future climate change (Sun et al., 2024), thus improving our understanding of the oceanographic processes in the region and testing the eReefs model is critical to assess this refugia hypothesis and manage the region appropriately. The eReefs model will be used in forecasting mode during the voyage (4 day lead time). This will be used to target observations to test the model in near real time. 4) Atmospheric measurements for the SGBR will contribute to the Reef Restoration Adaptation Project (RRAP) The atmospheric monitoring on the RV Investigator aims to characterise aerosol properties and their interactions over the Great Barrier Reef, providing essential high‑quality data to improve models used for predicting coral bleaching events. The atmospheric monitoring team at QUT would also like to test out a new piece of equipment on the voyage to investigate the gas-phase organic and inorganic compounds present in marine atmosphere using Selective Ion Flow Tube Mass Spectrometer (SIFT-MS) with new reagent ions selection capability. |
| Years: | 2026 |
Publications
Voyage Plan
- IN2026_V04 Voyage Plan Download file
- data sourced from following voyages IN2026_V04
List of surveys that this project was on.
Use [details] link to view survey details (map, reports, metadata etc) including links to download data.
| Survey | Investigator | Description |
|---|---|---|
| IN2026_V04 [details] |
Helen Bostock | Scientific objectives 1) Characterise the Quaternary evolution of Darumbal and close neighbour Woppaburra Sea Country and integrate with traditional knowledge to contribute to understanding the cultural heritage values of the SGBR. 2) Assess the Quaternary evolution and development of the coral reefs in the SGBR. 3) Study the interaction of the modern ocean currents with the reefs and seascape of the SGBR – to help validate and improve eReefs models. 4) Atmospheric measurements for the SGBR will contribute to the Reef Restoration Adaptation Project (RRAP) |