Combining contemporary and long-term erosion rates to target erosion hot-spots in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

•This paper presents the first non-modelled estimates of contemporary measured erosion rates against background long term erosion rates in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchments.•Using an accelerated erosion factor (AEF), this study has highlighted that there are very specific ‘hot-spot’ areas that warrant priority treatment in terms of catchment remediation (Bowen sub-catchment, Upper Burdekin sub-catchment and low cover grazing areas).•Due to the large intra-catchment variability of erosion in space and time, this study highlights that having a single end of catchment water quality target is inappropriate. Sub-catchment monitoring and evaluation is more suitable.•The erosion rates presented in this paper represent a more robust way to ‘bench-mark’ current erosion rates compared with the current water quality ‘targets’.