The South East Queensland Event Monitoring (SEQEM) program is one of the three monitoring and assessment programs integrated into the Ecosystem Health Monitoring Program (EHMP). It is one of the critical actions to be undertaken by the South East Queensland Healthy Waterways Partnership as part of the South East Queensland Healthy Waterways Strategy (2007-2012). The strategy includes the following target; “By 2026 non-urban diffuse source pollutant loads entering receiving waters will be reduced by 50 percent and in-stream ecosystem health will improve in targeted catchments”. The SEQEM program collects event based water quality data that can be used to determine diffuse source pollution loads entering Moreton Bay and help to determine if this target is being met. The SEQEM program represents a partnership between six organisations that independently own and operate event monitoring stations in SEQ. Partners include the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM), SEQ Catchments, Seqwater, Sunshine Coast Regional Council (with Maroochy Waterwatch), Moreton Bay Regional Council, Toowoomba Regional Council, Logan City Council and Redland City Council The overall goal of the SEQEM program is to enhance current understanding of the loads of sediment and nutrients transported in the region’s waterways and the contributions to these loads from different land uses. Specific objectives are to:

• Better characterise the quantity and quality of different diffuse sourced pollutant concentrations of nutrients and sediment during runoff (storm) events;
• Refine the event mean pollutant concentration values used in catchment models using locally collected data; and
• Provide information on trends in sediment and nutrient loads over time to assist evaluation of the effectiveness of catchment remediation measures.

The event monitoring program forms an important addition to the EHMP by providing information on sediment and nutrients transported during rainfall/runoff events. As major rainfall/run-off events affect water quality in the catchments and in Moreton Bay, information from the event monitoring program is important in assisting interpretation of results of the freshwater and estuarine–marine components of the EHMP. Although not fully integrated into the current condition reporting, it is anticipated that the event based monitoring data will be used to improve the interpretation of the EHMP results more fully in future. It is also being used to calibrate and test SEQ catchment water quality models. Two catchment modelling projects have been initiated and include an e-water application project with a focus on the Logan and Albert catchments and another region wide catchment modelling project that will develop region wide catchment models. Modelling efforts to date have focussed on reviewing the event monitoring data to identify possible relationships with catchment characteristics as part of research into alternative constituent generation methods under the eWater application projects.

To view data for events, select a subregion from the online report card.