Developing indicators for monitoring catchment health: the challenges

Abstract

Summary. This paper emphasises the critical importance of achieving environmentally healthy and productive catchments in Australia. This widely held societal goal requires an understanding of landscape processes and predictions of how they might impact spatially on regional land, water and vegetation resources. Such knowledge would assist the development of more sustainable property and catchment plans.

Current developments in the application of indicators for assessing and monitoring catchment health are briefly described, together with the emerging challenges facing their wider adoption by land managers, the resource stewards of rural Australia. These imposing challenges include: developing a core set of nationally accepted catchment health indicators; meeting the requirement for spatially dense data at reasonable cost; developing and testing new environmental indicators related to on-farm nutrient management and the potential for nutrients to leak off-site; and quantitative estimates of soil biological health.