Academic literature on the topic 'Herbert River'

A laboratory-based study of the behaviour of phosphorus (P) was carried out on the soils of the lower Herbert River catchment, Queensland, Australia. The aim was to explore the potential for P sorption or desorption by Herbert soils in associated river and estuary waters, so that the extent of problems associated with sugarcane production and soil-derived inputs to streamwater could be defined. Anion exchange resin was used as a sink for P. The equilibrium phosphate concentration (EPC) measured in simulated soil pore water (0.01M CaCl2), and the EPC in the simulated river and estuary waters were strongly correlated. Based on this, and the close relationship between P sorption and selected soil properties, it was possible to estimate P desorption using commonly measured properties. Much less desorption of P took place in simulated estuary waters than in simulated river water of much lower ionic strength. This suggests that environmental degradation arising from the downstream export of soil-borne P from Herbert cane lands is likely to be concentrated in freshwater areas. Sorption properties of P in soils of the lower Herbert appear to be closely associated with aluminium-rich minerals, rather than with iron (hydr)oxides.

The two Herbert River ringtail possum subspecies, Pseudocheirus herbertensis ssp. herbertensis and P. h. ssp. cinereus, have diploid chromosome numbers of 12 and 16, respectively. The sex chromosomes of both subspecies are exceptionally large, with the X and Y chromosomes being approximately 16 and 12% of the haploid autosomal complement, respectively. A sex chromosome bivalent cannot be identified during male meiosis and a sex vesicle is not present during pachytene. The two karyotypes are most likely related by two centric fusion events affecting the autosomal complement. We conclude that the X and Y chromosomes have been translocated onto homologous autosomes to give t(XA) t(YA) ♀ t(XA) t(XA) ♂. Our data also strongly support the separation of P. h. cinereus as a distinct species.Key words: karyotypes, sex chromosomes, speciation.

Because coral reefs are sensitive to land derived inputs of nutrient and sediment, there is concern worldwide for the effects of anthropogenic change in river catchments on reefs. Thirty-one river catchments drain directly into the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, NE Australia. This case study was undertaken on the floodplain of the Herbert River catchment in north Queensland, utilizing remote sensing and GIS to assess both spatial and temporal changes in freshwater wetlands and riparian forests. We demonstrate that there has been a very large reduction in the area of these ecosystems since European settlement in the mid nineteenth century, with an 80% decline in their extent since 1943. We provide a range of quantitative measures to show that the landscape diversity of these ecosystems has also declined. These changes are of importance in terms of regional, national and international trends. We argue that policy, planning and management reform is required if the remaining ecological, economic and social values of these systems and the adjacent Great Barrier Reef Marine Park are to be maintained.

Current strategies for phosphorus (P) fertiliser management in the Australian sugar industry do not account for the differences between different soils in their ability to sorb and release P. However, the off-site export of P from land under sugarcane has been shown to be a major factor contributing to elevated concentrations of P in stream waters draining catchments dominated by sugarcane production. This paper presents the results of a study conducted in the lower part of the catchment of the Herbert River, north Queensland, a major sugarcane growing region. Our approach was to combine a knowledge of P sorption by soil and riverine sediments with an assessment of the risk of P loss from lower Herbert sugarcane soils and knowledge of the requirements of sugarcane for P. The results provide a basis for future P fertiliser management by canegrowers which accounts for both production and environmental imperatives. They also point to an urgent need for experimentation, based on rundown of soil P fertility, to determine critical soil test values in soils of varying P sorption, and provide a useful regional framework for the design of such experimentation.

Changes in the river chemistry of the Herbert River (northern Queensland) during a flood event that followed Cyclone Sadie in January 1994 are presented. Parallel data sets collected by AIMS and CSIRO were generally well correlated. Around the flood peak, concentrations of dissolved inorganic nutrients declined to a minimum, whereas particulate nutrient concentrations increased to a maximum (particulate nitrogen, 1200 µg N L-1; particulate phosphorus, 225 µg P L-1). Concentrations of dissolved organic nutrients varied erratically. Concentrations of silicate and potassium, pH and electrical conductivity varied inversely with discharge. Good correlations were observed between the concentrations of particulates and concurrent discharge, with differing relationships existing during the rising and falling stages of the flood. It is estimated that this flood event resulted in the export of at least 600 t of N, 65 t of P and 100000 t of suspended sediments over a period of six and a half days, with most transport (85%) occurring within the first two days. Particulate fractions of N (50%) and P (80%) constituted the bulk of the nutrient flux. This study illustrates the potential for high nutrient exports during brief flood events from intensively farmed agricultural land within tropical catchments.

Hydrologic variation has a profound influence on the life cycles of fishes in tropical rivers. Several studies highlighting the critical links between fish recruitment, river hydrology and other environmental factors exist globally. However, understanding of the influence of abiotic drivers on fish recruitment in Australia’s Wet Tropics rivers is limited. There is potential for humans to further alter the hydrologic regimes and the landscapes of these rivers and therefore, gathering knowledge about fish recruitment dynamics is needed to support the implementation of appropriate management strategies aimed at preserving the diversity within the Wet Tropics freshwater fish community. This thesis investigates relationships between key environmental factors – river hydrology, instream habitat structure and food availability – and fish recruitment among five coastal rivers in the Wet Tropics bioregion of north-eastern Australia, and describes how differences in key flow-regime attributes among the rivers may influence these relationships
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Griffith School of Environment
Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology
Full Text

The objective of the research reported in this thesis was to develop a technique to monitor the dynamics of sediments and nutrients entering the coastal ocean with river plumes associated with high intensity low frequency events (e.g. floods), using ocean colour remote sensing. To achieve this objective, an inverse bio-optical model was developed, based on analytical and empirical relationships between concentrations of optically significant substances and remote sensing of water-leaving radiance. The model determines concentrations of water-colouring substances such as chlorophyll, suspended sediments, and coloured dissolved organic matter, as well as the values of optical parameters using water-leaving radiances derived from the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS). To solve atmospheric correction in coastal waters, the aerosol type over clear waters is transferred to adjacent turbid water pixels. The vicinity of the Herbert River, central Great Barrier Reef zone, Australia, was used as a case study for the application of the algorithm developed. The satellite ocean colour technique was successfully validated using sea-truth measurements of water-colouring constituents acquired in the area during various seasons throughout 2002-2004. A high correlation between chlorophyll and dissolved organic matter was found in the coastal waters of the region, and when the bio-optical model was constrained to make chlorophyll a function of dissolved organic matter, the relationship between in situ and satellite-derived data was substantially improved. With reliable retrieval of the major water-colouring constituents, the technique was subsequently applied to study fluxes of particulate and dissolved organic and inorganic matter following a flood event in the Herbert River during the austral summer of 1999. Extensive field observations covering a seasonal flood in the Herbert River in February 2004 revealed high sediment and nutrient exports from the river to the adjacent coastal waters during the flood event. Due to rapid settling, the bulk of the sediment-rich influx was deposited close inshore, while the majority of nutrients exported from the river were consumed by phytoplankton in a relatively small area of the coastal ocean. With the help of ocean colour remote sensing, it was demonstrated that river-borne sediments and nutrients discharged by a typical flood in the Herbert River are mostly precipitated or consumed within the first 20 km from the coast and therefore are unlikely to reach and possibly affect the midshelf coral reefs of this section of the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.

The Forgiveness Project includes a critical introduction that defines the author’s approach to the short-short form as well as an explanation of how historiographical metafiction can work to memorialize. The first section contains primarily short-short stories that address the themes of motherhood, small tyrannies, happy liars, caregiving and the clichés of grief. A collection of linked short stories follows, revolving around elusive forgiveness. On the night of July 17, 1977, Juanita Lee, a bridge tender in South Florida, was abducted by two men and executed in the Everglades to silence her opposition to the demolition of an Intracoastal Waterway bridge. Twenty-two years later her daughter, Jill, now a Washington D.C. lobbyist who views the world through the cynical lens of her life’s work, is confronted with a plea for forgiveness via an organization called “The Forgiveness Project,” representing one of her mother’s killers.

One hundred and thirty-six years ago six immigrant small selectors formed the Herbert River Farmers’ Association (HRFA). On the Herbert a plantation mode of sugar production began in 1872. The selectors there, used the HRFA to actively participate in the transition of the tropical Australian sugar industry from plantation to small, family farms by 1914. Associations such as theirs formed the cornerstone of the institutional foundations of a globally unique and successful industry farmed by small, family farmers. Principal exponents of sugar industry organization history have consistently dismissed the small sugar cane farmers’ associations. Broader sugar industry scholarship however, identified them as having contributed to the demise of plantation production and the development of farm-based central milling. This assessment recognized that the HRFA and fellow small associations promoted small farming and that their members proved that white, small sugar farmers could farm in a tropical environment without detriment to their health and could provide a reliable supply of high-quality cane. Agricultural associations in sugar growing regions in the period 1872 to 1914 were dominated by white elite planters, practising an exploitative mode of production that used unfree or indentured coloured labour. Furthermore, land was not distributed equally to planters and small farmers alike, denying the small farmers, white or otherwise, the type of independence that came to characterise Australian white, small, sugar farmers. Land ownership and the freedom to form associations allowed the small selectors of the Herbert River Valley in tropical north Queensland in the late nineteenth century to negotiate with the planters in a way that the tenant farmers and share-croppers in other sugar growing regions could not. Accounts of the origins and nature of the sugar industry agricultural association movement focus exclusively on the planter associations while small sugar farmer associations are virtually invisible in the scholarship. Agricultural associations were vehicles both planters and farmers used to access rural extension, promote agricultural skills and innovation, and lobby with one voice. A top-down approach has made for a void in the understanding and appreciation of the development and role of small sugar industry agricultural associations in Australia. The Australian small sugar farmers’ association was unique in the global sugar industry association movement and the HRFA was the first of its kind in the plantation era in tropical Australia.

Despite widespread usage of organochlorine insecticides in the Queensland sugar industry from 1947 to 1987, there is remarkably little information on the use and environmental consequences of their usage. This thesis explores three aspects of organochlorine insecticide use in two significant sugarcane growing regions in North Queensland, the Herbert and Burdekin River regions. The first is the distribution of organochlorine insecticide residues in sugarcane soils and coastal and riverine sediments in both regions to assess the current distribution of organochlorine insecticide residues and provide information on historical inputs to coastal sediments. This information is combined with historical information regarding insecticide use in both regions to derive a mass balance for the applied insecticides. The second is the use of an enzyme assay (ethoxyresorufin 0-deethylase, EROD) to assess the exposure of a common tropical estuarine fish species, Acanthopagrus berda, to a range of organic contaminants and provide a screening tool for exposure to organochlorine insecticide residues. The third aspect is the examination of the historical factors influencing risks associated with insect control in the sugar industry, with a particular emphasis of the risks associated with organochlorine insecticide use. Easily detectable concentrations of organochlorine insecticide residues were found in the sugarcane soils of the Herbert and Burdekin River regions and reflected known application histories. Mass balance estimates indicate that currently less than 0.01% of the 3,900 tonnes of hexachlorocyclohexane, 40 tonnes of aldrin, and 46 tonnes of heptachlor applied to sugarcane in the Herbert and Burdekin regions since 1947 is estimated to remain in the soils of these regions. Low and variable concentrations were found in farm drains and creeks adjacent to sugarcane areas, suggesting some movement of organochlorine residues from the sugarcane fields is occurring. Fish collected from creeks draining sugarcane land and land minimally disturbed by anthropogenic activity generally showed a low level of enzyme induction and a low incidence of detection of organochlorine residues in fish tissue. An exception to this was fish collected from Cromarty Creek, which drains agricultural land in the Burdekin region. These fish showed enzyme induction comparable to that in fish collected from the urban catchment. Although the identity of the inducer is unknown, a town rubbish dump and/or recreational boating activity are suspected to be the sources. No detectable residues were found in coastal estuarine sediments of either region. Together with known sediment transport processes, this absence suggests that no contamination of the Great Barrier Reef environment as a result of historical organochlorine insecticide application in the Herbert and Burdekin Regions is occurring. Changes in insect control techniques in the sugar industry have been influenced directly or indirectly by research, changes in farming practices and government legislation, global environmental concerns and trade events. However, in the near future, insecticide usage in the Herbert and Burdekin regions is likely to be largely driven by regional issues related to the efficacy of control.

The interaction between groundwater and surface water systems is a key component of the hydrological cycle and an understanding of their connectivity is fundamental for sustainable water resource management. Water is a vehicle for mobilising dissolved constituents, including nutrients, between surface and subsurface waters and between terrestrial and marine systems. Therefore, knowledge of surface-subsurface linkages is critical not only for water quantity allocation, but also for water quality and its implications for ecosystem health. In particular, ascertaining the significance of groundwater fluxes for river nitrogen budgets is an important motivation for characterising river-groundwater connectivity. This overarching theme is developed through the course of the thesis. The marked seasonality of tropical river systems provides a unique opportunity to investigate groundwater contributions to surface waters, especially when there are minimal overland flows. The Herbert River in northeast Queensland represents a useful case study in the Australian tropics for assessing the potential for transport of agricultural contaminants, such as dissolved forms of nitrogen, between surface and subsurface waters, and between terrestrial and marine systems, including the ecologically significant Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. Whilst the lower Herbert River catchment, dominated by sugarcane production, is the focus for this thesis, the research methodology and policy implications for nutrient monitoring and management are applicable to other tropical catchments. An extensive water quality sampling program was instigated to collect river and groundwater samples during low flow conditions, for analysis of a range of conservative and nonconservative environmental tracers including major ions, stable isotopes of water, radon, and dissolved inorganic forms of nitrogen. Grab samples were collected during months representing the beginning and end of the dry season to compare connectivity relationships at contrasting stages of the stream hydrograph. Hydrochemical data at the end of the dry season is particularly useful for isolating the groundwater signal in the river and its tributaries. Existing physical and chemical datasets are also an important source of high temporal resolution information to supplement the more detailed water quality data collected specifically for this investigation. An understanding of the dynamics of water movement between river and aquifer storages is critical for assessing the mobility of dissolved nitrogen between them. A combination of hydrogeological, hydrometric, hydrological and hydrochemical tools are applied to characterise the interaction between the alluvial aquifers and the lower Herbert River at a catchment scale. Specifically, the potential for hydraulic connection and the direction of flux between the aquifer system and the river are evaluated through qualitative hydrometric approaches, including: depth relationships of the river channel with that of the underlying alluvial sediments; historical groundwater elevation-stream stage relationships; and groundwater flow patterns around the river. Hydrological techniques such as stream hydrograph and flow duration curve analysis are utilised to assess the temporal characteristics of flow in the river; the groundwater flux to the river is also quantified by hydrograph separation. Physical understanding of river-aquifer linkages is verified and enriched through analysis of surface water chemistry data, in conjunction with the conceptual hydrogeological model developed from physical and chemical assessment of the aquifers. The significance of groundwater as a vector for nitrogen is then evaluated in light of a conceptual process understanding of the river-aquifer system. This provides a platform for undertaking future catchment-scale nutrient budget studies based on detailed investigations of nitrogen sources and transformations. The research approach used in this thesis highlights the value of combining analytical techniques, not provided by any one method, to inform and verify different aspects of a complex water resource problem involving both surface and groundwater systems. The application of multiple environmental tracers, at varied spatial and temporal resolution, is particularly instructive for distinguishing between the key processes that influence the chemistry of the river in space and time. Furthermore, the spectrum of tracer techniques provides both qualitative and quantitative information regarding the flux of groundwater along the length of the lower Herbert River. Whilst the absolute groundwater fluxes determined have a degree of uncertainty, mass balances of radon and selected solutes highlight the value of quantitative estimates in combination with qualitative trends to characterise river-aquifer relationships. The analyses demonstrate that discharge of groundwater from the alluvial aquifers is a dominant influence on both the flow and chemistry of the lower Herbert River in the dry season. In particular, groundwater is a key vector for the delivery of nitrate to the river during low flow conditions. This provides a new perspective for monitoring and management of nutrients in tropical rivers where there is good connectivity with the underlying groundwater system. Key recommendations arising from this research include: (1) water quality sampling should be undertaken at recognised periods on the stream/groundwater hydrograph, with an understanding of temporal and spatial river-aquifer connectivity relationships; (2) surface and subsurface sources of water and dissolved nutrients must be considered, including identification of nutrient hotpots in both surface water and groundwater systems; (3) sampling locations should capture the longitudinal variation in river nutrient concentrations, not simply end-of-river monitoring; (4) appropriate water quality guideline values must be set to account for seasonal changes in both the sources and forms of nutrients transported to surface waters.

This chapter discusses Edith Wharton’s critical assessment of modern consumer culture, whose ascendancy she associated with standardised sartorial and literary tastes. By showing her indebtedness to Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary theories, it argues that she was suspicious of fashion’s imperative for ‘newness’ and thought that its cultural dominance was detrimental to cultural and artistic progress. Alongside essays such as ‘The Vice of Reading’, ‘The Great American Novel’, ‘Permanent Values in Fiction’, and ‘Fiction and Criticism’ as well as unpublished material from the Edith Wharton Collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the chapter focuses on novels such as The Touchstone (1900), The Custom of the Country (1913), The Children (1928), Hudson River Bracketed (1929) and The Gods Arrive (1932).

Pioneers of the U.S. Automobile Industry uses four separate volumes to explore the essential components that helped build the American automobile industry - the people, the companies and the designs. This volume uses nearly 270 photos to go behind the scenes to explore the people who created car designs that have become famous with the American car industry. Pioneers covered in this edition include: Elmer and Edgar Apperson Vincent Bendix James Scripps Booth Alanson Brush David Buick Joseph Cole Clyde Coleman Claude Cox Herbert Franklin and John Wilkinson Elwood Haynes Frederick Haynes Thomas Jeffery Edward Jordan Charles King Howard Marmon Jonathan Maxwell Percy Owen Raymond and Ralph Owen Andrew Riker Frank Stearns Thomas J. and Thomas L. Sturtevant C. Harold Wills Alexander Winton

Most scientists now agree that some sixty-five million years ago, an immense comet slammed into the Yucatan, detonating a blast twenty million times more powerful than the largest hydrogen bomb, punching a hole ten miles deep in the earth. Trillions of tons of rock were vaporized and launched into the atmosphere. For a thousand miles in all directions, vegetation burst into flames. There were tremendous blast waves, searing winds, showers of molten matter from the sky, earthquakes, and a terrible darkness that cut out sunlight for a year, enveloping the planet in freezing cold. Thousands of species of plants and animals were obliterated, including the dinosaurs, some of which may have become extinct in a matter of hours. In Impact, Gerrit L. Verschuur offers an eye-opening look at such catastrophic collisions with our planet. Perhaps more important, he paints an unsettling portrait of the possibility of new collisions with earth, exploring potential threats to our planet and describing what scientists are doing right now to prepare for this awful possibility. Every day something from space hits our planet, Verschuur reveals. In fact, about 10,000 tons of space debris fall to earth every year, mostly in meteoric form. The author recounts spectacular recent sightings, such as over Allende, Mexico, in 1969, when a fireball showered the region with four tons of fragments, and the twenty-six pound meteor that went through the trunk of a red Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York, in 1992 (the meteor was subsequently sold for $69,000 and the car itself fetched $10,000). But meteors are not the greatest threat to life on earth, the author points out. The major threats are asteroids and comets. The reader discovers that astronomers have located some 350 NEAs ("Near Earth Asteroids"), objects whose orbits cross the orbit of the earth, the largest of which are 1627 Ivar (6 kilometers wide) and 1580 Betula (8 kilometers). Indeed, we learn that in 1989, a bus-sized asteroid called Asclepius missed our planet by 650,000 kilometers (a mere six hours), and that in 1994 a sixty-foot object passed within 180,000 kilometers, half the distance to the moon. Comets, of course, are even more deadly. Verschuur provides a gripping description of the small comet that exploded in the atmosphere above the Tunguska River valley in Siberia, in 1908, in a blinding flash visible for several thousand miles (every tree within sixty miles of ground zero was flattened). He discusses Comet Swift-Tuttle--"the most dangerous object in the solar system"--a comet far larger than the one that killed off the dinosaurs, due to pass through earth's orbit in the year 2126. And he recounts the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994, as some twenty cometary fragments struck the giant planet over the course of several days, casting titanic plumes out into space (when Fragment G hit, it outshone the planet on the infrared band, and left a dark area at the impact site larger than the Great Red Spot). In addition, the author describes the efforts of Spacewatch and other groups to locate NEAs, and evaluates the idea that comet and asteroid impacts have been an underrated factor in the evolution of life on earth. Astronomer Herbert Howe observed in 1897: "While there are not definite data to reason from, it is believed that an encounter with the nucleus of one of the largest comets is not to be desired." As Verschuur shows in Impact, we now have substantial data with which to support Howe's tongue-in-cheek remark. Whether discussing monumental tsunamis or the innumerable comets in the Solar System, this book will enthrall anyone curious about outer space, remarkable natural phenomenon, or the future of the planet earth.

To understand how things have worked is the best preparation for looking ahead. So I will not gaze into a crystal ball but explain what is happening in England and Wales. I will, however, set out and discuss some scenarios for the future. In 1989 the water industry emerged from the nationalization era which it had entered only fifteen years earlier. It was a late entrant into the world of public corporations that had emerged between the wars, and particularly after 1945—a world that was a product of Fabian thinking and wartime experience. The Fabians provided the intellectual base for ‘gas and water socialism’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two world wars encouraged people to believe that the state could manage our basic industries efficiently, and the inter-war depression drew attention to deficiencies in the working of the market economy. ‘Gas and water socialism’ started in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in the municipalities, with gas, water, electricity, and tramways. In the inter-war years there was a movement towards regional, then national operations, culminating in the post-war Nationalization Acts. Consolidation in water followed slowly. The amalgamation of municipal undertakings into ten Regional Water Authorities did not take place until 1973. It brought a host of water and wastewater undertakings onto a river basin basis. A further step was taken in 1983 with the substitution of smaller, more executive boards for the much larger bodies that had included local authority representatives. The model for nationalization in the UK developed from the experience of Herbert Morrison, a key figure in the post-war Labour Government. It involved an arm’s-length relationship with government. By the 19705, the flaws in this model were evident. The boards of the nationalized industries were required to act in the social interest, subject to breaking even financially. The definition of the social interest was the responsibility of the boards, without any clear mechanisms for ministers to influence their decisions. It was never clear what ‘breaking-even’, ‘taking one year with the next’, meant in practice. Moreover, having delegated social functions to such a public not-for-profit body, ministers found it difficult to stay clear.