ABSTRACT
Coastal/estuarine water pollution is becoming an increasingly serious global problem largely due to input of land-derived contaminants. For example, nutrient leachate from the sugar cane production areas of NorthEast Queensland is causing great concern for the Great Barrier Reef in Australia [Haynes and Michael-Wagner, 2000]. The resulting degradation of coastal resources affects significantly economic and social developments of coastal regions. Traditionally, terrestrial fluxes of chemicals to coastal water have been estimated on the basis of river flow alone. However, recent field observations indicate that contaminants entering coastal seas and estuaries with groundwater discharge (submarine groundwater discharge, SGWD) can significantly contribute to coastal pollution, especially in areas where serious groundwater contamination has occurred (e.g., Moore [1996], Burnett et al. [2001]). The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) [Buddemeier, 1996] has identified submarine groundwater discharge as an important but rather unknown source of contamination for coastal marine and estuarine environments. As the groundwater contamination problem worsens, the SGWD may become a dominant source of coastal pollution in certain areas.
