Monitoring and maintenance of gullies continues

NQ Dry Tropics is maintaining and monitoring gullies remediated between 2017 and 2020 by the LDC project through the Burdekin Major Integrated Project Gully Maintenance and Monitoring project.

The aim is to evaluate their effectiveness in reducing erosion and maintenance requirements of gully remediation works, which will be shared with groups to inform similar on ground gully remediation work.

Through the Queensland Government’s Queensland Reef Water Quality Program, the Landholders Driving Change will provide monitoring and maintenance of the 25 completed gully remediation projects (five large-scale and 20 small-scale sites) until 2025.

Monitoring and maintenance work will be carried out from June 2022 to April 2025 and will include three wet seasons. 

Monitoring has been completed for the 2022-23 wet season, and overall sites have held up well. 

Remediation works on the five large gullies do not require any significant maintenance.

Features identified, minor scouring, rilling, a small nick point, and low cover on a few bare areas, were considered low risk to the integrity of the remediation works.

Recommended maintenance is being carried out and these areas will continue to be monitored.

The small gullies also held up well, and in all cases, recommended maintenance was minor, and maintenance work was considered low risk to the integrity of the remediation works.

Maintenance activities have included reshaping disturbed areas, adding extra rock into channels, adding hay and organic matter and seed to areas of low ground cover, re-stacking of a number of existing stick and log ines and constructing additional stick dams.

One site was reported as being in excellent condition with good groundcover, needing no maintenance work. This site will continue to be monitored until the end of the project.

Monitoring is important to identify required maintenance actions, to enable project evaluation, and to continue advancing understanding of how best to achieve erosion control outcomes.

Site monitoring includes photo points, vegetation monitoring, intactness of project works, grazing management practices, and the condition of the land adjacent to the gully.

Programs funding ongoing gully maintenance are not widely available, which is why the Burdekin Major Integrated Project Gully Maintenance and Monitoring project is important because one of it’s aims is to facilitate future expansion of ongoing maintenance.

For further information about this project, read: ‘Funding to underpin long-term gully maintenance’