An intergrated investigation of nutrient generation and delivery processes and pathways from paddock to small catchment scales

Improving water quality, primarily through reducing nutrient concentrations, remains a massive challenge for effective catchment management. Strategies for such improvement are severely compromised by the limited knowledge of the linkages and interactions that occur as nutrients are mobilised, transported and transformed as they pass over the land surface, through the subsurface and into and along streams. Significant progress has been made in the individual disciplines of soil chemistry, hydrology and aquatic biogeochemistry through studies that target individual landscape components. This proposal will develop a multidisciplinary understanding that links these areas to provide a system view of nutrient behaviour in catchments.