Land Use - Australia

Australia

Land Use in Australia

An understanding of the impact of human settlement and resource development across Australia is a fundamental requirement for the assessment of the condition and trend of land and water resources.

Mapping land use pattern provides a basis for characterising Australia's landscape and understanding agricultural production and land management practices.

For example, land use information provides input to:

planning and implementing different land use practices
assessing the suitability of changes in land use with respect to climate, soil, slope and water availability
assessing environmental impacts and land at risk from land degradation such as salinity, flood, drought, and erosion
assessing agricultural productivity and opportunities for diversification
multi-disciplinary consideration (economics, management and ecology) of Australia's lands where the requirements of many interests need to be considered both in space and time
national, state and regional reporting about land use patterns, intensity and diversity
strategic decision making and
achieving natural resource management objectives (a combination of profitability, productivity and sustainability, recognising the interdependence of economy and ecology).

Australian land use is represented by the area of dominant land use by level of intervention or intensity. Thus nature conservation represents those areas with least human intervention, whilst the built environment has the greatest intervention. Generally. waterbodies have been classified according to the level of intervention and are thus often part of nature conservation.

Below are the land use categories shown in the maps and tabular data based on the 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2:

Nature conservation: encompasses the Collaborative Protected Areas Database's World Conservation Union (IUCN) categories 'strict nature reserve', 'wilderness area', 'national park', 'natural feature protection', 'habitat/species management area' and 'protected landscape'. See the Protected Areas product for definitions of the IUCN categories. Also includes 'other conserved area' which is crown land reserved for environmental conservation and recreational purposes without a gazetted IUCN category.
Other protected areas including indigenous uses: includes the IUCN category 'managed resource protection' together with aboriginal reserves (reserved crown land), private freehold and leasehold by aborigines undertaking negligible agriculture.
Minimal use: encompasses reserved crown land (stock routes, defence reserves and mine reserves) and vacant and institutional crown land. Also includes private land with open or closed native forest with unknown use (most likely remnant native cover).
Livestock grazing: those areas under native pasture used for extensive grazing by livestock.
Forestry: encompasses production forestry (of native forests), plantation forestry (large industrial sized areas planted with native and exotic species) and farm forestry (small scale commercial areas of native and exotic species generally for specialised markets).
Dryland agriculture: includes grazing of modified/sown pastures, cropping and horticulture where no irrigation is used.
Irrigated agriculture: includes all agricultural activities under irrigation - grazing, cropping and horticulture.
Built environment: refers largely to urban areas (residential and licensed airports). Also includes those potentially agricultural areas unassigned. These areas are most likely to be rural residential in periurban areas and open-cut mines.
Waterbodies not elsewhere classified: most waterbodies are classified according to their land use and tend to fall under a IUCN category.

The land uses shown are listed by increasing level of human modification/intervention. This excludes the category 'Waterbodies not elsewhere classified' as these features really relate to land cover rather than land use. These land use categories are a simplification of the Australian Land Use and Management (ALUM) Classification, Version 4.

It is important to realise that land use and land cover do not necessarily reflect the same thing. Thus 'Forestry' is not all forests, rather those forested areas (both native and exotic species) used for commercial purposes. Also land may have more than one use and thus only the prime use (based on the information available) is reflected. The prime use may differ from user to user depending on the purpose of the map or data they require. This suggests the need to retain as much information about a land parcel on its range of uses so the data can be modified for the required purpose. Land tenure provides information on land ownership and can infer land use.

Land Use patterns in Australia

Rainfall, or the lack of it, is the most important single factor determining land use in Australia.

Australia's area is 769 million hectares, with about one quarter mostly desert and not used commercially. Early settlements tended to be established near reliable water supplies leading to Australia's population being concentrated along the coast, mainly in the comparatively fertile, well-watered east, south-east and far south-west. The establishment of irrigation schemes, largely by government, also played an important role in populating inland Australia. The discovery of the Great Artesian Basin provided reliable water for the pastoral industry in the dry inland grazing country.

The most extensive land use in Australia is livestock grazing in arid and semi-arid regions and covers 430 million hectares or 56 percent of Australia. In total, the area of agricultural land is 473 million hectares or nearly 62 percent of the continent. With 120 million sheep, 24 million beef cattle and 3 million dairy cattle in 1996/97, Australian agriculture is predominantly livestock based. Agriculture was worth $28 billion with $11.9 billion from livestock industries, $11.6 billion from cropping, and $4.1 billion from horticulture (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1999). Although agriculture is still an important player in the Australian economy, mining, manufacturing, service and construction now contribute more to the economy than agriculture.

Minimal uses occur over nearly 16 percent of the continent. Covering 120.8 million hectares, 76 percent of this area is reserved, vacant or institutional crown land. Minimal use is located predominantly in Western Australia in the arid zone. In Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, remnant native cover on private land represent significant areas within the minimal use category covering collectively in those States nearly 23 million hectares.

Other protected areas including indigenous uses cover 102.6 million hectares (or over 13 percent) of Australia. Most of this area (89 percent) is for traditional indigenous uses. Traditional indigenous uses are located predominantly in the Northern Territory (48.3 million hectares), Western Australia (23.3 million hectares) and South Australia (16.9 million hectares) in the arid zone and to some extent the tropical north.

Nearly 50 million hectares or 6.5 percent of Australia has the land use of nature conservation. This includes features such as the salt lakes in South Australia like Lake Eyre. Eighty-five percent of Australia's nature conservation area is gazetted IUCN categories strict nature reserve and national park.

Forestry tends to be confined to regions of Australia with higher rainfall and covers nearly 2 percent of the continent.

The most intensive use is the built environment, which occupies about 2.4 million hectares, or 0.3 percent of Australia. The built environment encompasses both urban and periurban areas and open-cut mines. Open-cut mines represent a very small proportion of the built environment and would include mines such as the brown coal mines in the La Trobe Valley, Victoria. It is within this built environment that more than 80 percent of Australia's 19 million people reside (as at June 30, 1999).

Change in land use and intensity is most prevalent in the built environment. Within urban areas there is pressure to increase the density of housing with smaller block sizes, multiple dwellings and inner city apartment living. On the urban fringes, agricultural land, particularly the intensive horticultural and dairying industries, are lost to urban development to construct new suburbs or for small acreage hobby-farms.

Within the agricultural sector, between 1983 and 1997, there has been a decline in farm numbers and an increase in farm size. The area under irrigation has increased in NSW, Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory. This has resulted in increases in the area sown to rice in southern NSW and cotton in northern NSW and eastern Queensland (Walcott et al 2001).

The area under forestry is also increasing, with less productive or profitable agricultural land being planted to exotic and/or native species for commercial or for a range of conservation purposes. Clearing native vegetation, principally on private land, is also undertaken for urban development and expansion of agricultural lands. Initiatives like the Regional Forests Agreements between the Commonwealth and the States have lead to changes in publicly owned native forests from production forestry to nature conservation.

Change in land ownership, for example from the Commonwealth or States to traditional aboriginal owners, is less likely to result in a change in land use but rather a change in how that land is managed.

Since European settlement, the Australian environment has been greatly altered by agriculture, mining, forestry, industry and urbanisation. In terms of area, agricultural and pastoral activities have had the greatest impact on Australia's environment. How the land resource is managed is closely related to its use and involves many issues such as land degradation, water use and quality, vegetation clearance and degradation, reduced biodiversity and impact of feral animals and weeds.

View an A4 size map of Australian land uses

Acknowledgments and Caveats

The 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2, is the source of the Australian land use information, maps agricultural and non-agricultural land uses for April 1996 to March 1997.

Non-agricultural land uses were derived from a number of available data sets:

Protected areas are from the Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database compiled and maintained by Environment Australia (CAPAD97 for Tasmania and CAPAD99 for mainland Australia).
The topographic features of waterbodies, built-up areas and licensed airports are from TOPO-250K Version 1 (February 1999 update) released by Geoscience Australia.
The 1997 Australian Land Tenure Data Set compiled by the National Forest Inventory (NFI) provided distribution of public, private and aboriginal land in Australia. Native and plantation forests are from the 1997 Australian Native and Plantation Forestry Data Set compiled by the NFI. The forestry data was improved by inclusion of Queensland plantation data from the 1995 Australian Land Cover Data Set prepared by the Bureau of Rural Sciences.

Agricultural land uses were determined through an automated process to spatially allocate the agricultural census data using satellite imagery using a method described as SPREAD (Walker & Mallawaarachchi 1998). Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data captured by the Australian Centre for Remote Sensing was processed by CSIRO Division of Marine Research. Further processing was undertaken by Environment Australia to provide maximum NDVI (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index) composite images with the majority of cloud contamination removed.

Control sites were provided by various state and territory agencies largely through field visits and farmer interviews. The participating agencies were: NSW Agriculture, Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment, QLD Department of Natural Resources, Primary Industries and Resources SA, Agriculture WA, Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment and NT Department of Lands Planning and Environment.

The maps of land use across Australia use a simplified 5km grid cell, whilst the State and territory maps utilise the 1km grid cell size of the 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2. All tabular data was determined from the 1km grided product.

The data presented (unless indicated) reflects 1996/97 statistics from a range of sources with particular use of the 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2 and the Australian Bureau of Statistics' agricultural census data, AgStats.

Those establishments with only a small contribution to overall agricultural production are excluded from the agricultural census. Since 1993/94 all establishments with an estimated value of agricultural operations (EVAO) of $5000 or more are included. This EVAO was previously $22500 or more. The value of agricultural production is expressed in terms of gross value. Gross value is defines as the value placed on recorded production at wholesale prices realised in principal markets.

The reliability maps are relevant only to the agricultural land uses assigned to the 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2 data using the SPREAD method (Walker & Mallawaarachchi 1998) which provides two measures of reliability:

Affinity - the difference between a cell's NDVI profile and the NDVI profile of the control site used to assign the land use. A value of 0 indicates a perfect match and 1 indicates maximum dissimilarity.
Pass number - the number of iterations required to allocate the agricultural land use to a cell. The smaller the value, the more reliable the land use allocation.

For simplicity, the affinities and pass numbers have been categorised into 3 classes.

Reliability	affinities
Most reliable :	affinity values of 0.000 to 0.030 and those areas manually allocated
Medium reliability :	affinity values of 0.030 to 0.047
Least reliable :	affinity values of 0.047 to 0.483

Reliability	pass number
Most reliable :	1 pass and those areas manually allocated
Medium reliability :	2 or 3 passes
Least reliable :	4 to 19 passes

Factors such as the representativeness of the control site used (affected by distance, geographical region, homogeneity etc) and the number of different agricultural land uses within a region to be solved affect the affinity value and pass number obtained for an individual pixel.

What is the area of different land uses in Australia?

Table: Area of land uses in Australia
Land Use Description	Total Extent ('000 ha)	Total Extent (%)
No Data	187.4	0
Nature conservation	49881.3	6.5
Other protected areas including indigenous uses	102631.2	13.4
Minimal use	120812.3	15.7
Livestock grazing	430100.8	56
Forestry	15187	2
Dryland agriculture	40310.8	5.2
Irrigated agriculture	2170.3	.3
Built environment	2442.4	.3
Waterbodies not elsewhere classified	4993.7	.6

Pie graph reflecting land use classes by % total extent

Where are the agricultural lands in Australia?

Climate and soils play a major role where agricultural activities occur. As the driest continent in the world (excluding Antarctica), effective rainfall (where rainfall exceeds evaporation) is extremely important in Australia.

Most of our soils are naturally infertile and shallow, with deficiencies in phosphorus or nitrogen. Thus superphosphate and nitrogenous fertilisers are widely used. The choice of crop and pasture species within a farming system are also important to return nutrients to the system, maintain soil structure and minimise waterlogging.

Areas that have been cleared for crop and pasture production tend to coincide with five to nine months of effective rainfall per year. In areas of effective rainfall of more than nine months, generally only higher value crops or tropical crops and fruits are grown, while in areas with effective rainfall of less than five months, cropping is usually restricted to areas that are irrigated.

Australia can be divided in 3 agricultural zones:

1. High rainfall zone

Occurs in a narrow strip along Australia's east coast, Tasmania and the south-west corner of Western Australia.
Rainfall relatively high (> 500 mm annually) and reliable.
Fruit and vegetable growing and dairying are very important in the south, while the growing of sugar cane, tropical fruits and vegetables are prevalent in the north.
The dominance of sown pastures allows high stocking rates of beef cattle throughout the region. The region is generally too wet for sheep.
This highly productive coastal region comprises about 6 percent of Australia and contains all its major cities.

2. Wheat belt

Transitional zone between the continent's wet coast and its arid interior.
Produces almost all of Australia's cereal grain. Most farms also raise livestock. Wheat is grown throughout the zone, but in the south it is combined with sheep farming and the growing of barley and oats. In the north, cattle are widespread with sorghum and oilseeds also grown.
Livestock densities in the wheat belt are lower than on the coast, particularly in the north where pastures are not sown.
Under irrigation, the region produces fruit and wine grapes and in the north, cotton crops.
The wheat belt represents 14 percent of the continent's land area.

3. Pastoral zone

Agriculture is restricted to the raising of livestock on native pastures.
Most of Australia's inland area (comprising 72 percent of Australia) is too dry to sow pasture or crops. However, three-quarters of this arid region has sufficient plant cover to support extensive grazing, provided ground water is available.
Beef cattle are raised on huge properties in the north while sheep farming predominates in the south.
In far northern Australia (comprising 8 percent of the continent), monsoonal rains allow vigorous growth of native grasses during the wet season. However, once the rain stops, these grasses dry very quickly and cease to be nutritious leading to very low cattle stocking rates.

Agricultural lands in Australia

Where can I find more detailed land use mapping?

The catchment scale land use mapping was initially undertaken in the Audit's Key Implementation Areas and in Western Australia to:

establish agreed and repeatable specifications and procedures for mapping and undertaking data quality assurance for a program of continued land use mapping across Australia. These data sets cover 35% of Australia,
integrate the mapping of land use and native vegetation in Western Australia and
provide information at the catchment scale for input into the Audit's Implementation Area projects.

Mt Lofty Ranges, South Australia

Fitzroy River Basin, Queensland

East and West Gippsland Catchment Management Authority Regions, Victoria

Western Australia

The map below shows the available regional mapping areas, the scale of mapping and classification level according to the Australian Land Use Management Classification.

What sources of information were used?

Australian Bureau of Statistics (1999) AgStats: Small Area of Agricultural Commodity Data 1996-97

Australian Bureau of Statistics (1999b) Australian Demographic Statistics. (3101.0 June 1999)

Australian Land Use Management Classification

Bureau of Rural Sciences (1997) National Forest Inventory, Australian Tenure 1:250 000

Bureau of Rural Sciences (1999) 1995 Land Cover 1:25 000

Bureau of Rural Sciences (1999) National Forest Inventory, Native Forest and Plantations of Australia 1:250 000

Division of National Mapping (1980) Atlas of Australian Resources, Third Series, Volume 1 Soils and Land Use. Canberra

Environment Australia (1998) Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database - CAPAD97

Environment Australia (2000) Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database - CAPAD99

National Land and Water Resources Audit (2001) 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2

Randall, L (2001). Coordination of land use mapping of key implementation areas. Final Report BRR6. National Land and Water Resources Audit, Canberra.

Stewart, J.B., Smart, R.V., Barry, S.C. and Veitch, S.M. (2001)1996/97 Land Use of Australia - Final Report for Project BRR5 , National Land and Water Resources Audit, Canberra.

Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment (1999) Tasmanian Rural and Fishing Industry Profiles

Walcott, J.J., Zuo, H. and Rath, H. (2001) Recent changes in agricultural land use in Australia. Proceedings of the 10th Australian Agronomy Conference, Hobart, 2001

Walker, P.A. and Mallawaarachchi, T. (1998) Disaggregating agricultural statistics using NOAA-AVHRR NDVI. Remote Sensing and the Environment 63, 112-125