Hyperspectral Satellite Monitoring of Post-Cyclone Water Quality in the Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem and a UNESCO World Heritage Area, yet its inshore lagoon faces escalating water quality degradation from catchment-derived sediment and nutrients mobilised during cyclone events. Current GBR monitoring relies exclusively on multispectral satellites, MODIS, Sentinel-2, and Sentinel-3, which cannot separate co-varying optical signals from suspended sediment, coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM), and phytoplankton, and systematically underestimate turbidity exposure duration on inshore reefs by a factor of 4–10 times.
This project pioneers the application of new-generation hyperspectral satellite sensors, PRISMA (239 bands, 400–2500 nm) and EnMAP (224 bands, 420–2450 nm), for post-cyclone water quality monitoring in the GBR, a combination never previously attempted.
The 2025–26 North Queensland cyclone season provides an extraordinary natural experiment: Tropical Cyclone Koji (Category 2) made landfall directly acoss the Burdekin River delta in January 2026, and Severe Tropical Cyclone Narelle (Category 4–5, comparable to Yasi 2011) crossed Cape York Peninsula in March 2026, two major events within 10 weeks, generating sediment plumes from both modified and pristine catchments.

AI enables optical water type classification, discriminating mineral sediment from organic floc and phytoplankton, that broadband multispectral sensors fundamentally cannot achieve.

Research outputs include validated open-source hyperspectral water quality algorithms for GBR waters, the first AI-trained spectral classification model for tropical reef flood plumes, and a practical monitoring protocol to support Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan policy implementation.

This project directly advances CADSI’s Nature impact domain through AI and remote sensing applied to one of Australia’s most critical ecosystems.

Project Team and Collaborators:
*  Sofie Boggio Sella | MPhil Candidate, Earth and Environmental Science, JCU Townsville
*  Dr Bren Jarihani | Principal Supervisor, Senior Lecturer in Earth and Environmental Science, CADSI, TNQ Drought Hub, JCU
*  Dr Rafael Carvalho | Co-Supervisor, Lecturer in Physical Geography & Marine Remote Sensing, JCU

Funding Sources to be Acknowledged:
*  JCU HDR Research Training Program Sponsorship
*  2026 TNQ Drought Hub Scholarship