A decade of restoration: promising insights from the Logan River nutrient offset project
Successful river rehabilitation and ecosystem restoration over ten years offer valuable insights for similar projects and environmental initiatives in SEQ and beyond.
Sediment and nutrient load management |
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Flood resilience |
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Improved condition of riparian vegetation |
A restoration project that has been running since early 2014 has gone from strength to strength, showing that significant outcomes can be achieved through deploying targeted long-term works.
A recent impact assessment demonstrated multiple benefits for longer-term performance in reducing erosion, including increased resilience to disaster-scale flooding.
Modelling predicts that if planned restoration works are undertaken on the site, the site stands to significantly reduce sediment loss from streambank erosion by some 100,000 tonnes over ten years.
Successful river rehabilitation and ecosystem restoration over ten years offer valuable insights for similar projects and environmental initiatives in SEQ and beyond.
The Logan River nutrient offset site, a pilot initiative delivered by Healthy Land & Water in partnership with Urban Utilities, involved bank reprofiling, pile field installation, rock toe emplacement, and reforestation. Since then, maintenance activities such as minor earthworks, replanting, and weed management have been conducted regularly to ensure the project's longevity. One of the notable successes of the project has been the reestablishment of mature native woody vegetation.
The resilience of the site has been tested through repeated high-magnitude floods in 2015, 2017, 2021, and 2022. Despite these challenges, the site sustained a relatively minor level of erosion, aligning with the predicted performance determined during the planning stages. A multi-faceted approach was used, including LiDAR change analysis and onsite observations, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the site's development since its inception.
Read more about our nutrient offset projects here.