Effects of Climate Change as Environmental Pressures of Dugong dugon strandings in the Great Barrier Reef
The growing rate of global climate change seen in recent decades raises concerns about repercussions on the Earth's environment. The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia is not only the world’s largest and most diverse reef systems but also a protected World Heritage site. Unfortunately, over the last 20 years, areas of the Great Barrier Reef have shown increased signs of environmental degradation mostly resulting from the effects of anthropogenic climate change, which is testing the resilience and threatening future of the reef. It is having an increasing negative impact on a variety of species which are dependent on the Reef for survival including Dugong. Our study and data analysis looks at the environmental pressures impacting Dugong’s within the Great Barrier Reef as a result of Climate change.
The study area comprises of 4 sites along the coast of Queensland, Australia selected from the dugong stranding data. These sites are Moreton Bay (152.9, -27.0), Hervey Bay (152.7, -25.2), Townsville (146.8, -19.2) and Cairns (145.8, -16.9). The variables of interest initially selected were Nitrogen, Temperature, Salinity and Light Intensity Above Seagrass, but from using correlation heatmaps that compared variables, ocean temperature was removed from the project as it had little impact on seagrass density.
Datasets were obtained from:
- eReefs BioGeoChemical Model (4km): ocean temperature, salinity, total nitrogen, light availablity and seagrass density.
- Queensland Government Open Data Portal: Dugong strandings
- NOAA's International Best Track Archive for Climate Ctewardshrip (IBTrACS): Cyclone Data
A data analysis was conducted in a Jupyter notebook using python and the matplotlib library within. It is suggested to continue to use these programs to reconduct any analysis.
We have provided 5 step-by-step notebooks with all coding needed to run the datasets through Jupyter:
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Extracting Data: an overview of how to iput data into the notebook and visualise it
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Creating Correlation Heatmaps and GIFs: an overview of creating correlation heatmaps to compare variables and making GIF's
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Timeseries and Slicing Data: an overview of analysing variables over time and specific locations
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Cyclone Analysis: an overview of the cyclone data analysis using bar graphs
Contributors to the ENVI5809 project include:
- Claudia Le Quesne
- Eda Dagli
- Georgie Terrey
- Naomi Johnston
- Yidan Cui