This dataset presents extent and condition data for Australian rivers and streams for three time periods: 2010–11, 2015–16 and 2020–21.
Freshwater ecological condition, especially that of rivers, is known to be influenced strongly by adjacent land use. Land Use Intensity (LUI), extracted from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARES) Land Use data (Land use of Australia 2010–11 to 2020–21), is used as a proxy for inferring the condition (landscape characteristic) of freshwater ecosystems.
Land Use Intensity (LUI) is defined by the ALUM classification (Australian Land Use and Management Classification Version 8 (October 2016)) as a measure of the intensity of different land uses, with the primary classes ordered from 1 (mostly natural) to 5 (intensive uses) in terms of increasing intensity. Category 6 represents areas obscured by water bodies. These areas are excluded from the ordinal classification as they do not have associated land-use intensity levels, thus cannot be used as a proxy for river condition.
The data was compiled using river extent data sourced from the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) Geofabric v3.3. River segments were created based on two characteristics: River Region, which are reporting regions for major river catchments in Australia, sourced from the Regions product within the BoM Geofabric v3.3; and Ecosystem Functional Group (EFG), which is the finest level of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Global Ecosystem Typology (IUCN GET) classification system.
The river segments were further broken down by assigning the LUI category for each of the corresponding time periods. Spatial layers representing Land Use Intensity were overlaid with river segments, allowing each segment to inherit the LUI classification from the adjacent land use. The subsequent river fragments were then grouped into multipart line features, with each feature representing a unique combination of River Region, EFG, and LUI for each period. This process is described in the National Ecosystem Accounts, experimental estimates Methodology.
This dataset was used to produce summary statistics for the National Ecosystem Accounts, experimental estimates. The statistics provide an overview of river condition across river regions, states and territories, based on the total length of rivers that fall within each of the LUI categories.
