The land resource surveys project provides co-ordinated information on the nature and condition of soil, vegetation and landscape. Maps, reports and databases provide this information in forms that can be interpreted for agricultural and urban land suitability
Statewide
Ambient Biological Monitoring and Assessment
This project provides essential natural resource information on the health of our rivers and waterways and assists in making decisions about the sustainable management and use of the State’s water resources. The freshwater biological monitoring and assessment program throughout the State’s rivers and streams is to assess river health, using macroinvertebrates as indicators. The program uses the AUSRIVAS predictive models developed as part of the National River Health Program. The outputs of these models are core indicators of the State of the Environment Reporting and are also recommended for the NAPSWQ and NHT2 Monitoring and Evaluation programs. Data and outputs of this project are regularly used for condition and trend assessment for Water Resource Plans, SoE reporting and other assessment programs. Indices have been developed to separate impacts of flows from non-flow related impacts. This has been successfully applied in the Burnett and Pioneer WRPs.
AussieGRASS – Australian Grassland And Rangeland Assessment by Spatioal Simulation
“Aussie GRASS is a collaborative project that runs operationally a calibrated and validated national pasture growth model at 0.05 degrees resolution in near-real time. Information products including climate and simulated pasture maps and spatial
data are made available each month via the web as absolute data, and as percentiles relative to historic data. In addition seasonal forecast probability maps are produced. AussieGRASS is a tool that was developed in the early 1990s to monitor, at regional scales (e.g. local government areas or bioregions), key biophysical processes associated with pasture degradation and recovery. AussieGRASS also provides a means of early warning as to when and where livestock numbers may be out of balance with likely forage supply. This information, for example, forms part of the Australian Collaborative Rangelands Information System (ACRIS).
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SLATS (Statewide Landcover and Trees Study)
Provides accurate information on vegetation cover change and greenhouse carbon accounting for policy development, resource monitoring, and for compliance with the Government’s Vegetation Management Policy