Vegetation information for improved natural resource management in Australia

Up-to-date, reliable information on the type, extent and condition of vegetation is increasingly required at a range of scales for a range of policy, regulation and management purposes. This paper describes the development of national level vegetation information frameworks for mapping vegetation across Australia. Vegetation mapping and monitoring in Australia have historically been the responsibility of state governments. In the late 1980s, the Australian and State and Territory governments developed the National Forest Inventory to facilitate the collection and availability of contemporary, valid and standardised forest data to assist in the planning and management for the conservation and use of Australia's forests. The National Vegetation Information System framework (ESCAVI, 2003) expanded this concept for compiling vegetation structure and floristic information for entire landscapes. The National Vegetation Information System framework has recently been used to integrate data from a range of sources to provide a whole-of-landscape view of vegetation, including native, non-native and non-vegetation land covers. Map compilation approaches to vegetation assessment provide only one form of information required for policy, regulation or management decisions. Compiling and updating such snapshots of Australia's vegetation cover provide little, if any, information on the condition of the vegetation. Differences between repeated snapshots through time using this approach are often the result of differences in classification approaches or mapping technologies rather than actual changes in the structure and/or floristics of the vegetation. It is argued that efficient assessment of change in vegetation condition requires repeated measurements of condition indicators at the same sites over time. We present a continental forest monitoring framework design concept to address this concern. Issues that need to be addressed relating to monitoring framework data and map-based information are also discussed in the context of adaptive management for improved natural resource management.