Zoe Bainbridge
Water Quality Scientist
Email: zoe.bainbridge@jcu.edu.au
Phone: 07 4781 4595
Zoe is a research scientist studying water quality in the Great Barrier Reef catchment and marine environment. During the period she has been with ACTFR, Zoe has coordinated the Burdekin Water Quality Monitoring Program for the Burdekin Dry Tropics NRM group, and has established an extensive network of community volunteers (over 30 graziers and canegrowers) who assist with monitoring sediment and nutrients from the sub-catchments of the Burdekin River during wet season event conditions, as well as plume sampling during large flow events from the Burdekin River and the lower Burdekin coastal areas.
Zoe has also managed the establishment of a similar water quality monitoring project for the Townsville region, which includes the monitoring of the catchments within the coastal plain and adjacent marine environment during event plume conditions. Through collaborative linkages with the Mackay Whitsunday NRM Group, Zoe has developed sampling procedures and risk assessment protocols for the volunteer networks in the Burdekin, Tully, Townsville and Mackay Whitsunday NRM regions, and has been involved in a state-wide initiative to establish sampling method protocols for monitoring across the GBR catchment area.
Zoe has been involved in water quality information synthesis and issue identification tasks for both the Burdekin and Tully regional Water Quality Improvement Plans, and has used monitoring data from the Burdekin Region to validate modelling outputs (SedNet and ANNEX models) to determine end-of-catchment sediment and nutrient loads.
More recently, Zoe’s research efforts have focused on tracing sediment and nutrient runoff from catchment areas of the Great Barrier Reef.