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In this section you will find detailed information, including national overviews and state and regional level assessments, from the 2000-2002 National Land and Water Resources Audit theme assessments.
Australian Catchment, River and Estuary Assessment 2002
National Land and Water Resources Audit, 2002
ISBN 0 642 37125 3
Informing target and priority setting through comparisons in condition
As demonstrated by the various views of the same data sets in Figures 14-25, the patterns of catchment condition vary according to the scale of the assessment framework. Larger comparative frameworks such as entire river basins 'smooth over' the heterogeneity of finer scale patterns of catchment condition such as displayed in the 5 x 5 km grid.
Target setting occurs at two levels:
- Australia-wide to determine broad priorities for protective management and remedial works; and
- within a catchment or region for the allocation of resources.
Using river basins as the basis for comparison and for setting Australia-wide or State/Territory target and priorities appears appropriate. Comparisons between entire river basins also inform links between catchment condition and downstream resources (water quality or estuary condition), where the total catchment acts as an integrator for downstream condition.
A finer scale assessment framework is required to identify priorities for catchment management within a specific catchment or region and define localised areas of better or poorer condition. The 500 km² subcatchments and the 5 x 5 km comparisons used in this project appear most appropriate for these applications.
The application of landscape regionalisations for catchment condition assessment was examined by overlaying subregions on an assessment of catchment condition using the 500 km² subcatchment framework (Figure 29). The underlying patterns of catchment condition are reflected by subregion boundaries indicating the landscape controls on many of the drivers (e.g. soil type, topography, land use) of catchment condition. Based on this initial examination, the use of landscape units as the basis for comparison is another useful way to analyse the data sets.
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