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After huge amounts of coral bleaching and rising carbon emissions, the Great Barrier Reef could really use some good news. Sadly, that's not what it got this weekend.
A draft report from the Department of Environment and Energy recommends forest clearing should go ahead at northern Queensland's Kingvale Station, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Prospective clearing was first authorised in 2014, and its purpose would be to make way for cropping and other activities.
Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg will rule on the matter, and if it goes forward it'll mean 2,000 hectares of forest areas right next to the Reef will be cleared. And that would almost certainly mean a soil pollution problem for the Reef.
[...] Not only is too much heat and light a problem, so is lack of sunlight. Sediment washed from the land into the Reef blocks sunlight onto the coral, restricting the necessary process of photosynthesis. It can also damage or kill some of the fauna supporting the ecosystem.
"Declining marine water quality, influenced by land-based run-off, is one of the most significant threats to the long-term health and resilience of the Great Barrier Reef." Ironically, that's a quote from the Queensland Government's State of the Environment page.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by requerdanos on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:03AM (7 children)
Or, depending on your perspective, it would mean that nutrient-rich topsoil would finally reach the reef.
You can't have both of those. You don't have "too much light" and add a gram of topsoil and suddenly have "lack of sunlight." There's a range.
On the other hand, reefs are often starved of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous [reefkeeping.com] that soil happens to be a great supplier of, if only the ecosystem provides a way to transfer it.
The point is, quoting the link above, "nutrient enrichment from terrestrial sources cannot be called either beneficial or deleterious without context." TFS/TFA provides none, only dogmatic assertions that "dirt is bad".
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:21AM
Forestry has come a long way in recent years. Forest managers are loath to lose topsoil even more than farmers are.
Rivers are not generally full of silt near timber operations as the article suggests. People get fined for that
kind of stuff in some parts of the world.
Since the land is intended to be uses for "Cropping" (which I assume is farming), the real problem is not the logging, but rather the lax management by farmers or corporations to which this land is entrusted over generations. Even that is manageable, but requires an attention to detail which may or may not be sustainable.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Informative) by coolgopher on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:26AM
Speaking of context, in this case the context is the Great Barrier Reef, where land run-off [aims.gov.au] and resulting declining water quality [gbrmpa.gov.au] is a well-documented problem [abc.net.au].
And those were only the first few links google spat back at me.
Once again, as an Australian I'd like to reassure each and everyone one of you that our state and federal governments are doing everything they can on this issue to ignore it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:31AM
That nutrient-rich topsoil is poison for the reef and a boon for other species [gbrmpa.gov.au] that compete with it.
You know? If I'm throwing you in a huge mass of caviar, you aren't going to thrive in it even if you consider it a delicacy now.
Replace it with a pool of Coke for a closer-to-reality analogy.
And your point is... exactly what?
Because shit like cyclones happens - loosened soil near the coast isn't going to stick around because you want so. Guess what happens when your range is vastly exceeded [abc.net.au]?
Without the extra nutrients, the Great Barrier Reef did absolutely fine for tens of thousands of years.
What makes you believe that adding more is better? (again: how about force-feeding you 5 gallons of Coke everyday?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:51AM
Very smart tweet! I never said Mexicans are dumb. I don't know if Mexico has a DEP, a Department of Environmental. But if they do, they should hire you.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Pav on Tuesday May 15 2018, @03:22AM (1 child)
Reefs are the deserts of the oceans, with corals being the cactus. Just as too much water kills cactus sediment kills coral. The reason water clarity is so excellent on reefs is because the water is almost devoid of sediment and plankton... which is why corals, instead of relying solely on filter feeding have developed a symbiotic relationship with zooxanthelae, an algae which supplies the coral with carbohydrate. If the zooxanthelae stop photosynthesising, for example due to lack of light or a high temperature event, the stop producing carbohydrate while still stressing the corals with their waste products. The coral polyps eject most of their zooxanthelae in the hope that conditions improve, and they can gradually rebuild their algae populations before they starve.
I've worked wih an ex-dive instructor who would talk about his experiences. Already inshore reefs are mostly gone in the sugarcane growing regions here in Queensland, and apparently the operation he worked for ended up taking tourists to wrecks instead of reefs in the end because "their" reefs died.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:31PM
Steering tourists away from dead reefs seems a bad idea for raising environmental awareness. Anyone visiting the Great Barrier Reef has surely heard at least something about it dying back and shrinking. Yet, nothing to drive home the horrors of war like a fresh battlefield full of unburied bodies and still alive but fatally injured soldiers.
One sad sight are the logged parts of Sequoia National Park in California. A bit more than a century ago, these idiot loggers, not much caring or knowing just how old those trees were and that it would take a millennium for the environment to recover if it could at all, came in and cut down a bunch of giant sequoia trees as if they were like any other tree only lots bigger. They did it to see if they could turn a profit, but fortunately the profit was too marginal and too likely to turn into a loss, so they gave it up. They and their selfish, pathetic little money grubbing schemes are long dead and gone, but the damage they did is still very visible today.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday May 15 2018, @06:30AM
The once-abundant Grand Banks cod-fishing region had so many cod because the ice ages scraped all the topsoil off of Newfoundland.
It is said that there were once so many cod that you could walk on top of them without sinking into the ocean.
Overfishing led to a cod fishing moratorium in Canada - but the Portuguese continued to catch cod throughout the moratorium.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]