Urban Streams

You are assessing a proposal for an urban development in a location of high soil erosion vulnerability and downstream water sensitivity (e.g. Blue Mountains World Heritage Area). Identify what steps or actions you would require the Developer to undertake in order to ensure that these steps/actions are effective?

Describe some of the major environmental management challenges affecting coastal areas. Illustrate your response with examples.

The majority of Australia’s population live on the coast. Due to this there have been many residential and commercial developments that have built up on these coastal zones. This is particularly a problem for those that have developed on fore dune areas. Coastal erosion is a natural process and is occurring next to these developments. This is demonstrated recently on the Gold Coast as a result of Tropical Cyclone Oswald.

Another issue is climate change and increasing sea level rise. As climate has increased it has resulted in polar ice caps melting, resulting in a sea level rise. Although this is a slow process, modelling suggests that many low land coastal areas will be inundated with water when this occurs. This will result in an altered coastline. An example of this is the modelling of the Brisbane and Gold Coast region where it is predicted that a 1.1m sea water rise will result in entire suburbs flooded.

Acid Sulphate Soils are naturally occurring. The issue is that when these soils are exposed to oxygen, because of disturbance or draining they release sulphuric acid. The main reason acid sulphate soils are produced are because of draining for agriculture, urban development including infrastructure development. The immediate result is loss of vegetation and aquatic life. Therefore this causes habitat degradation, increased chance of acid tolerant weeds taking over the environment, reduced aquatic fish species as well as increased chance of diseases.