The wet tropics region is characterized by tropical climate with a discrete wet and dry season and high rainfall. The major environmental concerns in the wet tropics region are transport of nutrients from fertilizer application and herbicides from various land uses. This paper focuses on pesticide transport in the Johnstone River catchments, Queensland from runoff in sugar cane fields. This research also involved the application of a vadose zone monitoring system (VMS) which has not previously been installed in Australia or in Wet Tropical environments. Using this VMS system, the temporal and spatial distribution of nutrients and pesticides in the vadose zone was studied.