Free Standard AU & NZ Shipping For All Book Orders Over $80!
Register      Login
The Rangeland Journal The Rangeland Journal Society
Journal of the Australian Rangeland Society
Shopping Cart: ( empty )
You are here: Home > Journals > RJ > RJ08072
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 31(1)

The Australian Collaborative Rangelands Information System: preparing for a climate of change

G. N. Bastin A E , D. M. Stafford Smith B , I. W. Watson C and A. Fisher D
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems and Desert Knowledge CRC, PO Box 2111, Alice Springs, NT 0871, Australia.

B CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems and Desert Knowledge CRC, PO Box 284, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

C CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, PMB Aitkenvaile, Qld 4814, Australia.

D NT Department of Natural Resources, Environment, the Arts & Sport, PO Box 496, Palmerston, NT 0831, Australia.

E Corresponding author. Email: Gary.Bastin@csiro.au

The Rangeland Journal 31(1) 111-125 https://doi.org/10.1071/RJ08072
Submitted: 17 December 2008  Accepted: 10 February 2009   Published: 26 March 2009

Abstract

Change is a constant in Australia’s rangelands. Appropriate management of this change requires a sound knowledge of drivers (e.g. climate variability, livestock grazing), their impacts on natural resources (state and trend), socio-economic outcomes, and how these feed back through learning and adaptive management to affect drivers and their impacts. Information is required at scales from enterprise to national, with regional and broader level information serving to influence rangelands governance through institutional arrangements, policy and funding programs. The Australian Collaborative Rangelands Information System (ACRIS) collates and analyses data from national sources and from its State and Territory jurisdictional partners to track and understand change at regional to national scales. ACRIS has recently reported changes between 1992 and 2005 in several biophysical and socio-economic themes at bioregional resolution. This paper describes the processes used to collate and analyse the often disparate data, to synthesise information across data types and to integrate emergent higher order information across drivers, impacts and outcomes to provide more complete understanding of change. Data gaps and inconsistencies were a major challenge, and we illustrate how some of these issues were addressed by using indicators to report changes in biodiversity. ACRIS now needs to foster increased coordinated monitoring activity and develop its reporting capacity to become the valued information system for Australia’s rangelands. We propose that future improvements will be best structured within a hierarchically nested framework that provides consistent overarching data at national scale relevant to the variety of rangeland values (e.g. change in ground cover) but focuses on regionally-relevant ecosystem services, and their appropriate measures, at the regional scale. A key challenge is to implement consistent and systematic methods for monitoring biodiversity within this hierarchical framework, given limited institutional resources. Finally, ACRIS needs to develop a dynamic web-based delivery system to enable more frequent and flexible reporting of interpreted change than is possible through periodic published reports.

Additional keywords: biodiversity, institutions, landscape function, livestock, rangeland monitoring, seasonal quality, socio-economics.


Acknowledgements

Many people contributed to ‘Rangelands 2008 – Taking the pulse’, and are acknowledged there. Members of the ACRIS Management Committee seminal to the report’s content and thus contributing to this paper include: Jenny Boshier, John Carter, Mark Cowan, Mike Fleming, Russell Grant, Richard Hicks, Linda Kendall, John Ludwig, John Lumb, Deborah Mullin, Richard Silcock, Melissa Schliebs, Rob Thorman, Annemarie Watt and Blair Wood. We thank Leigh Hunt, Paul Novelly and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments in improving this paper.


References


Allan C., Curtis A. (2005) Nipped in the bud: why regional scale adaptive management is not blooming. Environmental Management 36, 414–425.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | PubMed | (accessed 12 December 2008).

Bastin G. N. (2005). Australian Collaborative Rangeland Information System – Reporting Change in the Rangelands: National Synthesis of Reports from Pilot Regions. CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems and ACRIS Management Committee, Alice Springs, NT. Available at: www.environment.gov.au/land/publications/index.html#acris (accessed 8 October 2008).

Bastin G. N., Ludwig J. A., Eager R. W., Chewings V. H., Liedloff A. C. (2002) Indicators of landscape function: comparing patchiness metrics using remotely-sensed data from rangelands. Ecological Indicators 1, 247–260.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | (accessed 9 October 2008).

Cunningham R. , Silcocks A. , O’Connor J. , and Weston M. (2007). A statistical analysis of temporal trends in detection rates of birds in the rangelands, using Atlas of Australian Birds data, 1999–2006. Report to Department of the Environment and Water Resources, Canberra, by Birds Australia, Melbourne, Vic. Available at: www.environment.gov.au/land/publications/index.html#acris (accessed 12 December 2008).

Davies J., White J., Wright A., Maru Y., LaFlamme M. (2008) Applying the sustainable livelihoods approach in Australian desert Aboriginal development. The Rangeland Journal 30, 55–65.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | (accessed 8 October 2008).

Field S. A., O’Connor P. J., Tyre A. J., Possingham H. P. (2007) Making monitoring meaningful. Austral Ecology 32, 485–491.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | (accessed 8 October 2008).

Gutteridge M. C. , Stone G. S. , Hall W. B. , Hanna A. L. , and Kingston J. V. (2001). Intensity of Land Use. National Land and Water Resources Audit Rangelands Project Report, Canberra.

Hall W. B. , and Gutteridge M. C. (2001). Change in Land Tenure/Land Use. National Land and Water Resources Audit Rangelands Project Report, Canberra.

Hanslip M. , and Kelson S. (2007). Socio-economic Conditions and Trends in the Rangelands. Report prepared for the Australian Collaborative Rangeland Information System, Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra.

Hassett R. , Carter J. , and Henry B. (2006). Rapid mobile data collection – a technique to monitor rangeland condition and provide quantitative and interpretive information for a range of applications. In: ‘The Cutting Edge. Conference Papers for the 14th Biennial Conference, Australian Rangeland Society’. Renmark, SA. (Ed. P. Erkelenz.) pp. 202–205. (Australian Rangeland Society: Perth.)

Holmes J. H. (1997) Diversity and change in Australia’s rangeland regions: translating resource values into regional benefits. The Rangeland Journal 19, 3–25.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | (accessed 15 October 2008).

Landsberg J. , James C. D. , Morton S. R. , Hobbs T. , Stol J. , Drew A. , and Tongway H. (1999). ‘The Effects of Artificial Sources of Water on Rangeland Biodiversity.’ (Environment Australia: Canberra.)

Ludwig J. A., Bastin G. N., Chewings V. H., Eager R. W., Liedloff A. C. (2007) Leakiness: a new index for monitoring the health of arid and semiarid landscapes using remotely sensed vegetation cover and elevation data. Ecological Indicators 7, 442–454.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | (accessed 8 October 2008).

NLWRA (National Land & Water Resources Audit) (2001). ‘Rangelands – Tracking Changes, the Australian Collaborative Rangelands Information System.’ (NLWRA: Canberra.)

Novelly P. E., Watson I. W., Thomas P. W. E., Duckett N. J. (2008) The Western Australian Rangeland Monitoring System (WARMS) – operating a regional scale monitoring system. The Rangeland Journal 30, 271–281.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | open url image1

Oba G., Sjaastad E., Roba H. G. (2008) Framework for participatory assessments and implementation of global environmental conventions at the community level. Land Degradation & Development 19, 65–76.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | open url image1

Pickup G., Bastin G. N., Chewings V. H. (1998) Identifying trends in land degradation in non-equilibrium rangelands. Journal of Applied Ecology 35, 365–377.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | open url image1

Pople A. R. (2006). Modelling the Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Kangaroo Populations for Harvest Management. Final report, Department of the Environment and Heritage, Canberra, ACT.

Prince S. (2002). Spatial and temporal scales for detection of desertification. In: ‘Global Desertification: Do Humans Cause Deserts?’. (Eds J. F. Reynolds and D. M. Stafford Smith.) pp. 23–40. (Dahlem University Press: Berlin.)

Reynolds J. F., Stafford Smith D. M., Lambin E. F., Turner B. L., Mortimore M., Batterbury S. P. J., Downing T. E., Dowlatabadi H., Fernandez R. J., Herrick J. E., Huber-Sannwald E., Jiang H., Leemans R., Lynam T., Maestre F. T., Ayarza M., Walker B. (2007) Global desertification: building a science for dryland development. Science 316, 847–851.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | CAS | PubMed | open url image1

Safriel U. , Adeel Z. , Niemeijer D. , Puigdefabregas J. , White R. , Lal R. , Winslow M. , Ziedler J. , Prince S. , Archer E. , and King C. (2005). Dryland systems. In: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Current State and Trends: findings of the Condition and Trends Working Group. (Eds R. M. Hassan, R. Scholes, and N. Ash.) pp. 623–662. (Island Press: Washington, DC.)

Safriel U. N. (2006). The assessment of global trends in land degradation. In: ‘International Workshop on Climate and Land Degradation’. pp. 1–38. (Springer-Verlag: Berlin.)

Scarth P. , Byrne M. , Danaher T. , Henry B. , Hassett R. , Carter J. , and Timmers P. (2006). State of the paddock: monitoring condition and trend in ground cover across Queensland. In: ‘Proceedings of the 13th Australasian Remote Sensing Conference’. (CD-ROM)

Smyth A. , James C. , and Whiteman G. (2003). Biodiversity Monitoring in the Rangelands: a Way Forward, Vol. 1. Report to Environment Australia prepared by Centre for Arid Zone Research, CSIRO, Alice Springs, Australia.

Stafford Smith M. (2008) The ‘desert syndrome’ – causally linked factors that characterise outback Australia. The Rangeland Journal 30, 3–14.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | open url image1

Tongway D. J. , and Hindley N. L. (2004). Landscape Function Analysis: Procedures for Monitoring and Assessing Landscape with Special Reference to Mine sites and Rangelands. (CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems: Canberra.)

Verstraete M. M., Scholes B., Stafford Smith M. (2008) Climate and desertification: looking at an old problem through new lenses. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment (in press). , open url image1

Walters C. J. (1986). ‘Adaptive Management of Renewable Resources.’ (Macmillan Publishing Co.: New York.)

Watson I. W., Novelly P., Thomas P. W. E. (2007a) Monitoring changes in pastoral rangelands – the Western Australian Rangeland Monitoring System (WARMS). The Rangeland Journal 29, 191–205.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | open url image1

Watson I. W., Thomas P. W. E., Fletcher W. J. (2007b) The first assessment, using a rangeland monitoring system, of change in shrub and tree populations across the arid shrublands of Western Australia. The Rangeland Journal 29, 25–37.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | open url image1

Zammit C. , Stauffacher M. , Laing D. , and Boshier J. (2008). Change in Australia’s rangelands: is there need for a national approach? In: ‘A Climate of Change in the Rangelands. Conference Papers for the 15th Biennial Conference, Australian Rangeland Society’. (CD-ROM) (Ed. D. Orr.) (Australian Rangeland Society: Perth.)