The Great Barrier Reef Catchment Loads Monitoring Program (GBRCLMP) reports water quality data (sediments, nutrients and pesticides) as part of its delivery obligations under the Paddock to Reef Integrated Monitoring, Modelling and Reporting Program. Publishing data online is a highly effective mechanism for communicating with industry and community stakeholders. A key consideration is to provide data as close as possible to the relevant time periods when the waterways were impacted by contaminants. The Water Quality and Investigations (WQI) unit has developed an ESRI Australia ArcGIS web app embedded with an Eagle.io data platform that allows for pesticide concentration reporting in the context of relevant guidelines (for example, irrigation guidelines, aquatic ecosystem protection guidelines, and drinking water guidelines).
The web app currently displays concentration data for 24 pesticides that are deemed priority contaminants in the waterways that enter the Great Barrier Reef lagoon and South East Queensland. The samples were collected from 96 sampling locations and include data going back as far as 2011. The web app automatically updates as new data and become available in Eagle.io. The ecosystem protection guidelines used in the dashboard represent either, default guideline values (DGVs) published in the Australian and New Zealand Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality (ANZG 2018) or proposed guideline values published by the Queensland Government (King et al. 2017a,b). The proposed guideline values have all been derived using the methods specified by the National Water Quality Management Strategy (ANZG 2018) and will all be submitted to the National Water Reform Committee for endorsement as Australian and New Zealand water quality guidelines.