- Description
-
It should be noted that this data is now somwhat dated!
Land protected from development through land-use zoning is relatively free from human activities that lead to habitat destruction and species decline. Land-use zoning is a planning tool. In general protected lands are not subject to land-use changes at the catchment scale. Wetlands or streams connected hydrologically to other catchments will be vulnerable to upstream/catchment impacts.
The Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database (CAPAD) at Environment Australia has protected areas mapped at the 1:250K scale. The dataset has been compiled from cadastre data which is mapped at finer scales than 1:250K and is considered to have excellent spatial precision. Data reliability is high.
The indicator is not a measure of pristine condition, as many protected areas have different zonings in the past and been subject to activities which have led to habitat decline. There are also different classes of protection and different sizes of area protected, some of which may be too small to conserve biodiversity. However, further decline is prevented through their current protected status, and in this sense % area of protected land indicates future viability for those habitats represented within protected areas. Protected areas will change through time.
Nature conservation areas such as national parks provide relatively stable systems where biota and landscapes are protected from many forms of disturbance. In higher rainfall areas with steeper slopes a protected area in the headwaters of a catchment may convey substantial benefits, particularly to downstream waterways and to neighbouring areas as refuge for wildlife. Where the protected areas are in the lower reaches of catchments, the value of protected areas for nature conservation are still high but the benefit to water coming from further up the catchment will be less. In drier, flatter catchments protected areas will probably not contribute substantially to the condition of surrounding areas in the catchment. For example, a salt lake national park will have little beneficial effect on the surrounding lands. In these cases the aggregation of small area catchments in relatively good condition to larger AWRC basins is misleading because the benefits are spatially restricted. The overall picture as shown by the 500 and 5×5 maps is dominated by the lowest category.
The AWRC map gives a quite misleading picture, missing large areas that are not protected and giving a better than average picture for much of SA and the NT. Major areas with relatively good protection are: southwestern Tasmania, East Gippsland and southern New South Wales, the Blue Mountains, parts of the Border Ranges and the New England Plateau, the Alligator Rivers region (NT), parts of Victoria River Downs, Purnululu, and areas north and west of Ceduna (SA). In the relatively poorest class are central and northern parts of the Murray-Darling Basin, the Burnett, Burdekin and Mitchell catchments (Qld), the Daly and Fitzmaurice River catchments (NT), most catchments in WA, and catchments of the Mount Lofty Ranges (SA).
Data: Weeds of National Significance ( NLWRA / Thorn and Lynch, 2000, The determination of weeds of national significance, 1:12.5m and 1:50m)
Data are available as:- continental maps at 5km (0.05 deg) cell resolution for the ILZ;
- spatial averages over CRES defined catchments (CRES, 2000) in the ILZ;
- spatial averages over the AWRC river basins in the ILZ.
See further metadata for more detail.
- Download
-
- pa_iccilr9ab__06021axx.xml (Other) 0.00KB - 298 hits
- Date Published
- 1 June 2000
- Date Updated
- 1 October 2010
- Update Frequency
- Not specified
Dataset Information
- data.gov.au Category
- Environment
- Keywords / Tags
- Environment, indicator, land, Land Cover, Land Use, water
- Licence
- Constraints
- Permalink
- http://data.gov.au/4556
Contributing Agency Information
- Agency
- Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry (View all datasets from Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry)
- Jurisdiction
- Commonwealth of Australia
- Agency Program
- Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences
Dataset Coverage
- Temporal Coverage
- 1 January 1990 to 30 May 2001
- Geospatial Coverage
- Australia
- Granularity
- Not specified
