Natural resource management planning: can more cost effective outcomes be achieved.

The decline in health of the Great Barrier Reef and the pressure on allocating funds efficiently has resulted in the catchments adjacent to the reef revising their Water Quality Improvement Plans. The Fitzroy basin and coastal catchments is 152,000km2 and geographically diverse, past work has identified the need to prioritise funds to achieve cost effective outcomes. For this paper we aim to present an alternative approach to effective prioritisation of sediment reductions. The approach integrates spatial information regarding the sediment source and process, levels of adoption, bare ground cover, and cost into a function to rank neighbourhood catchments. The results identify particular areas of the catchment and also demonstrate the complexity of the issue and the challenge the Fitzroy Basin Association faces when allocating funds. It does however demonstrate that there are effective opportunities in particular areas within the catchment, proving it to be a useful approach in understanding where in the catchment to focus efforts for different sediment reductions