Previous studies have shown that diatoms are sensitive to environmental changes in aquatic ecosystems and therefore can be as useful indicators for biological monitoring and assessment. These known sensitivities have also been used in palaeoenvironmental studies to infer past habitat conditions from dated sediment layers where the fossils of diatoms are present. However, identified relationships are often not transferable spatially across the landscape and the use of diatoms is often limited by available information specific for a region. We collected diatom and associated environmental data with the aim to investigate relationships between diatoms and environmental conditions in Cape York wetlands and where possible develop inference models for use in future palaeoenvironmental investigations.
238 species from 53 genera were identified from 52 samples across sites from 16 catchments in Cape York. Multivariate analyses showed that nine collinear variables had a significant relationship (p < 0.5; r2>= 0.5) with the diatom species ordination. Species environmental optima and preferences were used to develop weighted averaging models for inferring values of Conductivity, Total Alkalinity, Bicarbonate and pH. The developed models had high Goodness of fit (e.g. r2 > 0.9) and cross validation showed good predictions (r2 > 0.65). A test dataset (21 sites) for validation of conductivity predictions showed good results (r2 > 0.65). This information provides a tool for future investigations to reconstruct past conditions from diatom fossils identified in Cape York wetlands.