Transcript Land based surveys A way forward

Australia’s
Great Barrier Reef Region
(GBR)
Land based surveys
A way forward
Presentation outline
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Importance of the GBR region
Land Management Practice Survey
Pilot Land Account for the GBR
Discussion/Questions
Important Natural Asset
World Heritage Area with significant
biodiversity value
Huge tourism value
However it is also a very
vulnerable ecosystem
Region that is climatically
extreme and under excessive
human influences
$200m Australian Government program to
improve land management practices
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28 River Catchments
38 million hectares
790,000 people 15+
17,400 farmers and
farm managers
In 2007-2008 :
• $1.7b GVIAP
• $4.3b VACP
• 1.3 million ML
water used
What were the policy
questions?
• What land management practices
were undertaken by farmers in the
region?
• Could the clients specific issues be
measured?
• Could the impact of the $200m
intervention be measured?
Solving the client’s needs
• Business based approach used for
Agriculture surveys /census could not
produce catchment level information
• Solution was to use a land based
framework where the …..
• Statistical unit = LAND
Land Management Practices in the
Great Barrier Reef Catchments
• Collected information from the land owner or
manager on a range of land management
practices including soil testing, fertiliser and
chemical use, water management etc
• Survey differs from most ABS surveys about
agriculture or land management because it
employed a land based methodology rather
than a business methodology
• Information was collected where the primary
land use was classified to: sugar cane,
horticulture, broadacre cropping or beef
cattle grazing
Collection metrics
• Client had different priority needs in each of 28
catchments (beef, sugar, horticulture, broad
acre farming)
• 50,000 land parcels
• 24,000 property identifiers
• 19,430 holdings
• 4,502 sample (= 23% of pop. & 43% of area)
• 92% response rate (= 89% of area)
Statistical Unit
• Reported from “holding” - all land parcels under
common ownership within an individual
catchment
• Queensland Valuation and Sales Data (QVAS)
and Digital Cadastre Database were used to
define spatial land parcel boundaries, and
source information about each land parcel
including ownership, contact details.
• Breakdown of land use was also collected to
show area of land used for agriculture (by use)
and area of land not used for agricultural
purposes (conservation, water use etc)
Interpreting the data
• Land management practices with multiple
activities (not always possible to say which
practice related to which commodity)
• Some practices could be carried out multiple
times on the one piece of land (area counted
multiple times, not = area of holding)
• Influence of climatic and other external
conditions (eg price, availability of inputs).
This could impact on comparison over time
• Land used for agricultural activity (grazing) in
national parks and state forests was
excluded (minimal land management
practices allowed)
Unit formation – Cadastre
plus land attributes
Holding = statistical unit
Percentage of holdings growing sugar cane
using hot burn to remove crop residue (trash)
Developing an Experimental
Land Account for the Great
Barrier Reef Region
What are we doing?
• Integrating data from various sources
– Statistical
• Business Register
• ABS collected data
– Spatial
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Land use
Land value
Land cover
Environmental attributes
What we will be able to do
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Produce a set of tables at the Natural
Resource Management (river basin) level
that will show (using SEEA frameworks)
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Land use by sector (from Valuer General)
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Hectares
Land value
Land cover by sector (spatial source)
Land use by sector (spatial source)
Change in land cover over time (spatial
source)
And we will be able to
• Produce small area data (SA1 level)
integrating land use and land cover
information, as well as other
complementary data.
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SA1 boundaries
(ASGS)
2,915 SA1’s
5 NRM regions
210 land parcels
(ave) per SA1
Agencies will be able to overlay their
own spatial data files to these layers
to produce information for their own
policy issues, for example:
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Transportation – rail, bus, foot
Salinity
Soil condition
Wildlife mitigation
Social inclusion
And build their own regions from
the SA1s
Questions?