It will cost $8.2 billion over the next 10 years to repair the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland's Environment Minister Steven Miles says.
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That is eight times the $1 billion the federal government has set aside for its reef recovery efforts over the next decade.
It is the first detailed cost estimate of reducing the damage from nutrients and sediments that run into rivers and onto onshore and offshore reefs.
Dr Miles told a reef conference in Townsville on Thursday night that extra public and private sector money was needed.
The Reef Plan 2050 aims at tackling sediment and nutrient emissions in six "catchment basins" from north to south; Cape York, the Wet Tropics, Burdekin, Mackay-Whitsunday, Fitzroy and the Burnett-Mary.
Dr Miles said a study had concluded it would cost $8.2 billion in government and private funding to meet the maximum targets across four out of five catchments.
Nutrient reduction targets in the sixth Wet Tropics region could not be met under the current scenario, he said.
More than $6.4 billion was needed to reduce emissions by 50 per cent in the giant Fitzroy Basin.
A further $1.1 billion was needed to reduce sediments and nutrients flowing out to reefs in the Burdekin Basin.
He said tougher means to reduce nutrients flowing off farms and properties were needed.
"Clearly we would need new methods to achieve the maximum targets in those two catchments, and in the Wet Tropics where the targets cannot be met using the full list of actions in the study," Dr Miles said.
"But the projections for other catchments are much more achievable."
Final targets for each catchment are being adjusted, Dr Miles said.
"Final targets for each catchment will be developed later this year. The report will allow new costings to be quickly developed once final targets are determined."
Conservation groups during the federal election in May that repairing The Great Barrier Reef must be considered in the same scale as repairing the Murray-Darling Basin.
In 2007, the then-federal government allocated $10 billion to repair a myriad of problems in the Murray-Darling Basin where two rivers flowed through three states.
On Thursday night Dr Miles released the much-awaited costings study to control sediment and fertiliser nutrient flowing off properties into Great Barrier Reef waters at the Virginia Chadwick Memorial Lecture.
Ms Chadwick chaired the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority for eight years.
The detailed costs to reduce emissions flowing on to the reef were promised in May 2016 when the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce's presented its final report.
Dr Miles told the Townsville conference reducing sediment and nutrient levels became more expensive after the earliest reduction levels were reached.
"As a guide, the (costings) report shows that to meet 75 per cent of the maximum targets across all catchments would cost $3.86 billion," he said.
"The first half of progress could be achieved in all catchments for just $623 million."
The Great Barrier Reef suffered extensive coral bleaching in the summer and autumn months earlier in 2016, prompting additional funding promises from both federal parties and the Queensland Government.
In May 2016 coral scientists estimated that 35 per cent of the coral cover in the far north and northern regions of the reef had been damaged by coral bleaching.
In June 2016, the federal government promised a $1 billion fund over 10 years to fund projects to reduce combat nutrient and sediment flowing on to the Reef.
It will funded by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
The Queensland Government will spend $450 million on reef water quality projects over the next 10 years.
