Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) programs have expanded across the Asia–Pacific region with a focus on land use change monitoring, forestry and the conservation of soil and water quality to support upland agricultural-ecosystems (Druschke, 2013 FAO, 2005, 2011 Kaiser, 2014 Lamb, 2011 SPREP, 2007 Zeng et al., 2018). This decline in pH could be a potential source of acidification to downstream coastal ecosystems with implications for coral reefs, biodiversity and fishery livelihoods.Įnvironmental monitoring in water management programs has often been singularly focused: either at the catchment scale of the terrestrial realm or at the coast to reef scale of the marine realm. The 3.06 unit decline in pH for RSP3 exceeded both the mean diurnal variation in pH of 0.39 and mean seasonal variation in pH of 2.01. During the sugarcane crushing season (RSP3), mean pH declined by 3.06 units to 6.94 within 42 m downstream of the sugar mill ( P ≤ 0.001).
Mean pH measured before the sugarcane crushing season for RSP1 and RSP2 were 8.16 (± 0.49) and 8.20 (± 0.61) respectively.
Spatial variability in pH and water quality was characterised before (RSP1 and RSP2) and during (RSP3) the sugarcane season.
The sampling design focused on measuring spatio-temporal variability in pH throughout the sugarcane season with three rapid sampling periods (RSP1, 2 & 3) along the Ba River, together with continuous measurement of temperature and pH using stationary data loggers at two locations upstream and downstream of the sugar mill. The study measured water quality, including pH, over 88.40 km of the Ba River in Fiji. Within Pacific Small Island Developing States (Pacific SIDS), the ridge-to-reef (R2R) approach has emerged as a framework for monitoring river connectivity between terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
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