The Australian Marine Science Association (AMSA) held its 10th Annual Symposium on Wetlands, Estuaries and Coasts in Adelaide last month, where the EPA was well represented with input by four of its marine and water quality scientists.
AMSA is a non-profit organisation that promotes marine science that is open to anyone working or studying in this field.
EPA Principal Marine Scientist Sam Gaylard presented to the symposium on the monitoring of South Australia’s nearshore marine environment, assessing broadscale habitat conditions and the development of a tiered Monitoring Evaluation, Reporting and Improvement (MERI) program.
He described the program as a fundamental part of the overall management of the state’s coastal waters that required an effective communication tool to resonate through the wider community.
“Communication of the results from MERI programs is often left for scientific journals or one-off media statements about very good or very poor results, leading to poor take up by the general public,” said Mr Gaylard.
“Report card approaches are typically seen as a good tool for communicating results to non-scientific communities and can increase the acceptance of results and impact of monitoring programs.”
EPA Scientific Officer from the Water Quality Branch, Linda-Marie McDowell, also presented at the symposium on the topic of community engagement in urban Adelaide with the Catchment to Coast project.
She said the project had evolved from the Adelaide Coastal Waters Study (ACWS) between 2001 to 2007 which was developed in response to concerns of declines in water quality and the loss of seagrass.
“The Australian Government National Landcare Programme funded Catchment to Coast project is a partnership project that includes six sub-projects aiming to inspire local action and community engagement in improving water quality in urban environments and at the coast,” Linda-Marie said.
She said that these projects involved the provision of information, supporting community awareness with catchment to coast education and citizen science work, developing water sensitive urban design (WSUD) demonstration sites and implementing the Rain Garden 500 grant program.