This paper presents a review of the literature that examines the link between sediment impacts on coral reef ecosystems and the amount, source and processes contributing sediment from the 130,000 km2
Burdekin River watershed, Australia. First, we evaluate the response of coral reef ecosystems to elevated levels of sediment (Section 3) and assess the evidence for an increase in anthropogenic derived sediment
fluxes to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) (Section 4). We then trace the sediment back to the watershed source (Section 5) and the erosion process generating the sediment (Section 6). The key drivers of this erosion (Section 7) and the potential management response for reducing sediment erosion and delivery are then discussed (Section 8). A synthesis of the findings and areas of further research are presented in
Section 9. In each section, we aim to identify specific sediment characteristics that link impacts on reef ecology to the source and transport processes in the watershed. Our review focuses on the Burdekin River
watershed and surrounding marine waters as it is the largest contributor of anthropogenic derived fine sediment to the GBR lagoon (Kroon et al., 2012). The results of this review will be relevant to all watersheds upstream of coral reefs, and of particular interest to dry-tropical watersheds that have undergone land degradation due to cattle grazing. Excessive amounts of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon and silica) are also known to affect coral reef ecology (Hallock and Schlager, 1986); however, for brevity, nutrients are not assessed in this review as they have been dealt with in detail elsewhere
(e.g. Fabricius, 2005).