Lawrence Hughes

Griffith University · Griffith Centre for Coastal Management

The study aims to investigate transport processes within the entrance of a coastal lagoon through estimating the advectiondispersion coefficients of the estuary. To this end, an extensive observational data set including water level variation and current has been used for the hydrodynamic calibration of the model. Simulation of water quality variat...

Small tidal inlets are important features of coastal areas, in terms of provision of access from a back barrier water-body to the ocean as well as periodic circulation of fresh nutrients for the local ecology. Usually, dimensional and geometrical characteristics contribute significantly to morphological stability or instability of a particular inle...

Water quality management is an ongoing challenge for coastal managers. They are faced with disentangling the multiple determinants involved when assessing the utility of management interventions, understanding the processes behind historical trends and progress towards future water quality goals. Nonparametric statistical methods such as locally we...

The Gold Coast is a popular coastal holiday destination but beaches and surf are now not enough to remain competitive in the Australian tourist market and the destination needs new and innovative attractions. There are already high quality dive sites – natural and artificial. Studies are being undertaken to identify and investigate opportunities to...

This paper describes development of a numerical tidal model and a data collection program for the Coomera River estuary on the Gold Coast. The primary objective of this project was to provide a detailed picture of the tidal characteristics within the study area; to investigate the degree and importance of tidal asymmetry at the Coomera River; to ca...

Noosa Main Beach (Sunshine Coast, Australia) experienced large volumes of filamentous algae Hincksia sordid during the summer months for three consecutive years. Visually unappealing and producing an obnoxious odour, it has a significant negative impact on the local tourist-based economy. Traditional methods of dealing with the algae were unsuccess...

Coastal processes have been monitored for the Tugun desalination plant for over a year by attaching a 1 MHz Sontek Argonaut ADCP and a YSI 6600 CTD to an in-house designed seabed platform with data being downloaded every two weeks by raising the instruments to the surface, manually transferring the data via an interface cable to a laptop computer a...

Abstract : As the community becomes increasingly aware of environmental disasters and climatic extremes, a feeling of ineffectiveness and frustration can often be created through lack of involvement and influence. This paper aims to encourage the amateur climate change enthusiast to become an effective scientific observer by presenting working exam...

This paper describes development of a numerical tidal model and a data collection program for the Coomera River estuary on the Gold Coast. The primary objective of this exercise is to provide a detailed picture of the tidal characteristics within the study area; to investigate the degree and importance of tidal asymmetry at the Coomera River; to ca...

This paper describes a data collection program for the Broadwater study at the Gold Coast. The objective of this project is to provide a data set for the study of hydrodynamic behavior of the Broadwater and its associated waterways. This data set will be used for the calibration of a hydrodynamic model, which will be developed at the next stage of...

Tallebudgera Creek is a wave-dominated estuary on the Eastern Coast of Australia. Offshore wave condition is a key parameter, which controls morphological changes at the entrance of this creek. Numerical modeling shows that under dominant southeasterly wave condition significant mouth infilling can happen. This can result in full blockage of the cr...

Numerical modelling of beach morphodynamics is generally recognized as a valuable tool for scientists and coastal managers. However, the utility of numerical models is constrained by our ability to establish that the theoretical dynamics match reality. The integrated modules for simulating wave propagation, hydrodynamics and sediment transport in D...

Abstract The ability of weather, ocean and climate forecasting models to accurately predict climate trends, extremes and variability is dependant on accurate and reliable observations of past integrated Earth Systems. However, accurate, long-term measurements are expensive and the spatial domain needing to be measured is large, which often leads to...