4.2 Effects of dredging on water quality

Description

Establishing an evidence-based footprint of water quality impacts associated with dredging is clearly important for a range of stakeholders, including the public, so they have a clear and common perception of the nature and scale of pressures associated with dredging projects. It is also important for impact prediction purposes and the requirement in Western Australia for dredging proponents to assess and manage projects according to a spatially-based zonation scheme.

Knowledge of how pressure fields (a pressure is a physical, chemical or biological change that has the potential to cause environmental change) vary in space and time, will allow laboratory-based studies examining dose-response relationships to be conducted with realistic or relevant exposure conditions. To address these issues, the water quality monitoring data available from several large scale capital dredging projects in recent years have been subject to detailed study.

Aims

• To thoroughly characterise the hazard caused by dredging activities altering seawater quality in reefal environments.