State of the paddock: monitoring condition and trend in ground cover across Queensland

Peter Scarth
2013 Figshare  
Paper from the 13th Australasian Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Conference, Canberra, Australia, 20 - 24 November 2006. The proposed State Rural Leasehold Land Strategy (SRLLS) is a potential major driver for vegetation condition assessment acrossQueensland. Pastoral leases cover 85 million ha and within the next 5 years, 60% of these will be up for renewal. Since three quarters ofQueenslandhas a woody foliage cover of less than 20%, methods of monitoring the extent of groundcover (or
more » ... ely, bare ground) are required. Monitoring of groundcover is important since it is linked to indicators of soil loss, biodiversity, and pasture production. Ground cover is also an indicator target adopted by regional NRM and catchment management groups. Ground cover is variable due to both climate and management; both long term and short-term management affects are apparent with those land parcels showing long-term negative trends being of greatest concern. It appears possible to rank one land parcel relative to similar neighbours to identify grazing management related trends. It is possible to detect land parcels that are on a trajectory of increasing cover and others where there is a long-term trend to decreasing cover. By building on the world-class Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) archive of more than 1500 Landsat TM and ETM scenes covering the state with annual coverage or better from 1987, this project will deliver information on the condition and trend of groundcover over the past 20 years at better than paddock scale. By linking these results with climate and pasture growth models, the impacts and ramifications of management decisions on condition indicators can be assessed. This paper will discuss some of the challenges in deriving a robust product that is applicable across the range of cover types encountered inQueensland, and presents some preliminary condition and trend products.
doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.94248.v1 fatcat:kfq57552ffauvavkbbia2mnpgi