Nutrients in Sullivan's Creek
Abstract
Sullivan's Creek is a 13 km long creek which drains 53 square km of both urban and rural land in the Australian Capital Territory before discharging into Lake Burley Griffin. The last 2 km of the creek passes through the Australian National University (ANU) where it is a focus of the landscaping of the university grounds. The Facilities and Services Division of the ANU is concerned about the apparent poor quality of the water in the creek and a series of options to improve the appeal and use of the creek within University grounds are currently being considered. Previous water quality monitoring programs and field observations suggested that the quality of the water in the creek is dirtier, has lower dissolved oxygen and carries more phosphorus than other monitored streams in the ACT (Wasson, 1997). However, the understanding of water quality in the Creek was too poor to design ameliorative catchment strategies. This research project was established to provide the information and understanding that would allow the development of strategies aimed at improving the quality of water in the portion of Sullivan's Creek that flows through ANU grounds.