Total Suspended Solids, dust, mud carbonate & mud mineral (GBR4 BGC v3.1 baseline)
| < | ---- | > |
| Jan | Feb | Mar |
| Apr | May | Jun |
| Jul | Aug | Sep |
| Oct | Nov | Dec |
The sediment is modelled in multiple layers with a thin layer of easily resuspendable material overlying thicker layers of more consolidated sediment. The sediment model contains inorganic particles of different size (Dust, Mud, Sand and Gravel) and different mineralogies (carbonate and non-carbonate). The critical shear stress for resuspension, and the sinking rates, are generally larger for large particles, while and mineralogy only affects the optical properties. The size-class Dust comes only in a non-carbonate mineralogy, and the Mud-carbonate class contains a category of FineSed-mineral that has the same physical and optical properties as Mud-mineral, except that it is initialised with a zero value and only enters the domain from rivers.
Total Suspended Solids
This is the sum of the suspended sediments in the water column. It is [Fine sediment] + [Mud] + [Mud carbonate] + [Mud mineral] + [Dust]. Suspended sediment is often measured in mg / L. To convert between the model units (kg / m3) and typical units (mg / L), multiply the values by 1000, so 0.005 kg / m3 = 5 mg / L.
Dust
Very fine terrestrial sediment (nominal size 1 µm) released from the catchments via the rivers. It has a sinking velocity of 1 m d-1. This fine particle size is intended to model fine particles that are distributed in flood plumes.
Mud carbonate
Small sized (nominal size 30 µm), re-suspending particles with a sinking velocity of 17 m d-1. This sediment is white in colour.
Mud mineral
Small sized (nominal size 30 µm), re-suspending particles with a sinking velocity of 17 m d-1. This sediment is brown in colour.
Source data
The videos/images on this page are based on the 4km eReefs BioGeoChemical model (v3.1) (GBR4_H2p0_B3p1_Cq3b_Dhnd) run with SOURCE Catchments using Baseline catchment conditions. Detailed information about the model can be found in the paper: CSIRO Environmental Modelling Suite (EMS): Scientific description of the optical and biogeochemical models (vB3p0). The raw model data is available from the NCI THREDDS server (daily, in curvilinear NetCDF format) and the aggregate data from the AIMS eReefs THREDDS server (daily, monthly, yearly, in in regular rectangular grid NetCDF format).
Data span
These results are based on a fixed time period (Dec 2010 - Apr 2019) hind-cast analysis developed for comparing changes in land practices. The river run off used to drive the BGC model were provided by the SOURCE Catchments modelling.