Unravelling the economic and environmental tradeoffs of reducing sediment movement from grazed pastures

An undesirable consequence of grazing activities in eastern Australia is the quantity of sediment emptying into the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon. One of the challenges to reducing sediment loads stems from the lack of private incentives to improve land management practices. There is also a poor understanding of the financial implications resulting from the adoption of sustainable management practices, and, in particular the lack of scientific and economic knowledge linking on-farm management actions to catchment scale impacts. Bio-economic modelling has been used to identify the economic and environmental trade-offs encountered when grazing strategies are altered to reduce off-farm sediment movement from a black spear grass pasture in central Queensland.