LAND-OCEAN INTERACTIONS IN THE COASTAL ZONE March 2000 No. 14 LOICZ NEWSLETTER to the sea is considered by some to The threat mud poses to be of the most threatening impacts on coastal reefs of the Great Barrier the Great Barrier Reef Reef (Bell and Elmetri 1995). of Australia. HISTORICAL CHANGES Eric Wolanski1 and Norman Duke2 1Australian Institute of Marine Science, The impact of man on this sector of
[email protected] the coastline of the Great Barrier 2 University of Queensland Reef has been dramatic. Old pho-
[email protected] tographs of the Cairns waterfront suggests that the Cairns beach was The Cairns coast (Figure 1) of the sandy at the end of the 19th century, Great Barrier Reef of Australia has it is now muddy and the bed is 1.5 been severely impacted by man- to 2 m higher. This is affirmed by induced erosion. Over the last 100 oral accounts gathered from people years in this area much of the forest living in Cairns through 1930 to the and natural coastal vegetation and 1950s. The consensus is clear and wetlands have been modified to uniform, namely there was a sandy permit urban, port, industrial and beach before, the Esplanade was agricultural development (Wolanski This is the fourteenth newsletter used as a swimming and picnicking 1994, Larcombe et al. 1996, of the Land Ocean Interactions recreational area and there was Wachenfeld et al. 1997). The in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) even an open saltwater swimming coastal rivers have become drains International Project of the enclosure at the mouth of Trinity bringing eroded mud to settle in the IGBP.