Renee K Gruber

Australian Institute of Marine Science · Sustainable Coastal Ecosystems and Industries in Tropical Australia

Benthic dissolved oxygen fluxes were measured on the reef flat of Tallon Island, an intertidal reef platform in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia, for periods of 2 weeks in the wet and dry seasons. This reef flat is strongly tidally forced by semidiurnal tides (spring range > 8 m) and experiences highly asymmet-ric water level variabil...

Benthic fluxes of chlorophyll a (Chl a) and particulate organic carbon (POC) and nitrogen (PON) were quantified on Tallon reef, a strongly tide-dominated (spring range > 8 m) reef located in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia, over a 2-week period. Extensive hydrodynamic observations were used to construct a reef-scale mass balance to e...

Benthic fluxes of dissolved nutrients in reef communities are controlled by oceanographic forcing, including local hydrodynamics and seasonal changes in oceanic nutrient supply. Up to a third of reefs worldwide can be characterized as having circulation that is predominantly tidally forced, yet almost all previous research on reef nutrient fluxes h...

The water quality component of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Monitoring Program reports on the annual and long-term condition in inshore water quality of the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef) with reference to data over 17 years of monitoring. This year the water quality program is reporting in a summary report format: all of the core analyses have be...

Monitoring programs are fundamental to understanding the state and trend of aquatic ecosystems. Sampling designs are a crucial component of monitoring programs and ensure that measurements evaluate progress toward clearly stated management objectives, which provides a mechanism for adaptive management. Here, we use a well-established marine monitor...

The water quality component of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Monitoring Program reports on the annual and long-term condition in inshore water quality of the Great Barrier Reef with reference to data over more than 15 years. The program design includes the collection of samples along transects in the Cape York, Wet Tropics, Burdekin and Mackay-Whit...

The water quality component of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Monitoring Program has monitored and reported on the annual and long-term condition of inshore water quality in the Great Barrier Reef for the last 15 years. The program design includes the collection of samples along transects in the Cape York, Wet Tropics, Burdekin and Mackay-Whitsunday...

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s Marine Monitoring Program was established in 2005 to monitor the inshore health of the Great Barrier Reef. This document reports on the annual and long-term condition and trend of water quality in the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef). The program design includes the collection of water samples along tran...

The inshore water quality aspect of the Marine Monitoring Program reports on the annual condition and trend in water quality of the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef) with reference to previous data from 2005 to 2017. The program design includes the collection of water samples along transects in the Cape York, Wet Tropics, Burdekin and Mackay-Whitsunday...

The physical and chemical environment of the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef) ultimately underpins all ecological processes and other cultural and human values associated with the Reef. Reef ‘water quality’ is also a value in itself, and a pressure on many ecological, cultural, social and economic values through a range of physical and chemical proces...

Management of human pressures on regional and local scales, such as increased catchment run-off and direct use of marine resources, is vital to provide corals and reef organisms with the optimum conditions to cope with global stressors, such as climate change (Carpenter et al., 2008; Hughes et al., 2010; Mora, 2008). The management of water quality...

On behalf of the Office of the Great Barrier Reef (OGBR), C2O Consulting coasts climate oceans coordinated a workshop on 15 March 2018 aiming to provide clearer direction for future efforts to support improved understanding and management of bioavailable nutrient sources, pathways and impacts in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The outcomes will guide...

River mouths and estuaries can be highly productive habitats that support biodiversity and potentially targeted species for commercial, recreational, and cultural purposes. Productivity in the inshore environment is sensitive to terrestrial runoff that generates turbidity, deposits sediments, and subsidizes marine carbon and nutrient pools. While t...

Tide-dominated reefs experience mean tidal ranges in excess of local mean significant wave heights. Despite being common (~one third of reefs worldwide), almost no studies have focused on how the large tidal forcing of these systems controls the physical and biogeochemical properties of overlying waters and, thus, community ecological processes. Th...

There is growing interest in the role that seagrasses play as ‘blue carbon’ stores or sinks, and their potential to offset rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. This study measured primary aspects of the carbon balance (biomass, community metabolism, dissolved organic carbon [DOC] fluxes, seston trapping) across the depth gradient in a Zostera muell...

Benthic primary producers such as corals, seagrasses and macroalgae, play significant roles in a variety of coastal processes. They provide habitat for numerous fauna, stabilise sediments, and form the basis of coastal food webs. Through photosynthesis, primary producers use sunlight as the energy source to transform dissolved carbon into new plant...

Temperatures within shallow reefs often differ substantially from those in the surrounding ocean; therefore, predicting future patterns of thermal stresses and bleaching at the scale of reefs depends on accurately predicting reef heat budgets. We present a new framework for quantifying how tidal and solar heating cycles interact with reef morpholog...

A feedback between seagrass presence, suspended sediment and benthic light can induce bistability between two ecosystem states: one where the presence of seagrass reduces suspended sediment concentrations to increase benthic light availability thereby favoring growth, and another where seagrass absence increases turbidity thereby reducing growth. T...

Biomass and morphometrics of Zostera muelleri were monitored across depth, sediment type, and nutrient gradients in 2 coastal lakes (Tuggerah Lakes and Lake Macquarie) on the east coast of Australia. Tuggerah Lakes had significantly higher nutrient, chlorophyll a, and suspended sediment concentrations in the water column and significantly higher fi...

Seagrasses are rapidly declining worldwide due to anthropogenic impacts on coastal environments. One major contributor to seagrass loss is the degradation of water quality which reduces light availability. In this paper we use a data-driven approach to compare several indicators of light history for their ability to predict seagrass biomass. Data...

A 2 week field experiment investigated the hydrodynamics of a strongly tidally forced tropical intertidal reef platform in the Kimberley region of northwestern Australia, where the spring tidal range exceeds 8 m. At this site, the flat and wide ($1.4 km) reef platform is located slightly above mean sea level, such that during low tide the offshore...

Summary The available data from experimental and descriptive studies on seagrass biomass and density responses to nutrient enrichment was analysed to assess the intraspecific mechanisms operating within seagrass populations and if biomass-density relationships can provide relevant metrics for monitoring seagrasses. The response of shoot biomass and...

Understanding how multiple environmental stressors interact to affect seagrass health (measured as morphological and physiological responses) is important for responding to global declines in seagrass populations. We investigated the interactive effects of temperature stress (24, 27, 30 and 32°C) and shading stress (75, 50, 25 and 0% shade treatmen...

This study describes the influence of submersed plant beds on spatial distributions of key water quality variables. An on-board flow-through water sampling system was used to investigate patterns in turbidity, chlorophyll-a, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH across a robust stand of the submersed plant Stuckenia pectinata. Spatially interpolate...

Although physical and biogeochemical properties of an environment determine distribution and health of biota, some organisms modify habitat conditions through complex interactions with their surroundings. We quantified effects of the canopy-forming submersed plant species Stuckenia pectinata on local hydrodynamics and explored resulting positive an...

Annual cycles of growth and morphology were analyzed in a bed of the canopy-forming submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) species, Stuckenia pectinata, in relation to seasonal water quality conditions in a Chesapeake Bay tributary. A rapid accumulation of aboveground plant material occurred during the spring period of high water clarity, which aided p...