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Flushing of Australian estuaries, coastal lakes and embayments: an overview with biogeochemical commentary

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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Examination of a simple, but quantitative parameter, Sf/So, the ratio of average salinity of a coastal waterway/marine source water salinity, both geographically and temporally, identified five major types of coastal environment around Australia: (i) runoff-dominated annually - found mostly on the eastern seaboard, where rainfall is near continuous year-round ; (ii) seawater-dominated annually- large embayments with small runoffs; (iii) evaporation-dominated annually - found on the fringes of arid climate zones of western Australia, such as Shark Bay and in South Australia, Spencer and St. Vincents Gulf; (iv) runoff-dominated in the summer monsoon and evaporation-dominated in the winter - e.g. the northern Australian estuaries near moist-tropical and semi-arid zones with summer rains; and (v) runoff-dominated in the winter and evaporation-dominated in the summer-e.g. the estuaries and coastal lakes of southwestern Australia. A general equation of salt and water mass balances, including an evaporation term, was used to estimate freshwater residence time, a proxy for dissolved anthropogenic input. Geographic and temporal variation in climate forcing factors, notably seasonal variation in rain-fall and runoff and the net of evaporation and precipitation, exert major controls on residence time and flushing of Australian coastal environments. The inverse of the residence time (1/T day-1) is an important parameter in the estimation of quantities of dissolved anthropogenic inputs flushed from the coastal environment to the sea. As such, it is one important parameter for evaluating coastal water quality.

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Field Value
Title Flushing of Australian estuaries, coastal lakes and embayments: an overview with biogeochemical commentary
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/cddda661-a3c5-40a6-926f-568bbacef194
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Flushing of Australian estuaries, coastal lakes and embayments: an overview with biogeochemical commentary". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/flushing-of-australian-estuaries-coastal-lakes-and-embayments-an-overview-with-biogeochemical-c1