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• Land Use Data
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  • Catchment Scale Map
• Land Use Reporting
  • Land Use Change
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  • Regional Profiles
• Land Mgt Practices
  • LUMIS

Notes for Regional Land Use Profiles

This page gives more detailed information on the data sources for the Regional Land Use Profiles and considerations that need to be taken into account when viewing the data.

Please note that these profiles are simple representations of a limited number of social, economic and environmental attributes for a snapshot in time. These profiles aim to give basic regional overviews and highlight areas where there are gaps in the information.

NRM Regions

There are 56 Natural Resource Management regions identified across Australia for the purposes of determining natural resource management and sustainable agriculture priorities. These regions were derived from the Australian Government Department of Environment and Heritage's NHT Interim Boundaries, 25 February 2004.

For more information on these regions visit: http://www.nrm.gov.au/about-regions/index.html.

Population (2001)

Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001 Census of Population and Housing; concorded to NRM regions by BRS.

Annual Average Percentage Change

The average annual rate of growth is calculated from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 1996 & 2001, Census of Population and Housing; concorded to NRM regions by BRS.

Major Towns

The major town population figures are derived from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001 Census of Population and Housing.

Please note some of the outer suburbs of the major towns (such as Sydney) may crossover into surrounding NRM regions. These towns were assigned to a NRM region based on the Central Post Office. As a result major town population figures may not be accurate for some regions and instead the total population figure will give a better indication of the population for that region.

Spatial locations for the major towns were derived from Geoscience Australia, GEODATA TOPO-250K. Not all of the major towns where present in this dataset and so the following surrogates were used:

• 'Sunshine Beach' for the 'Sunshine Coast' in Queensland
• 'Trinity Beach' for 'Cairns Northern Beaches' in Queensland
• 'Nelson Bay' for 'Central Coast' in New South Wales
• 'Subiaco' for 'Perth' in Western Australia (had been split into suburbs)

Area

Area figures have been derived from the National Land & Water Audit, 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2 and rounded to the nearest 10 km². This dataset was used so that the area value matched that of the value in the land use area and agricultural production table. Therefore, only areas mapped during the land use mapping are included in this total and so it could under-represent some regions, especially those including small islands.

BOM Climate Zones

The Bureau of Meteorology Australian climate zones are based on the Köppen classification system. (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/environ/other/aus_clim_zones.shtml)

Land Use Area

Land use areas and percentages were derived from the National Land & Water Audit, 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2. Land uses have been grouped into the following classes:

• Nature conservation
• Other protected areas including Indigenous uses
• Minimal use (such as defence, stock route, remnant vegetation)
• Grazing natural vegetation
• Production forestry
• Plantation forestry
• Grazing modified pastures
• Dryland cropping
• Dryland horticulture
• Irrigated pastures and cropping
• Irrigated horticulture
• Urban intensive uses
• Water
• Unclassified

Land uses are assigned based on the primary land use at the time of mapping (1996/97) and do not take into account multiple uses.

Agricultural Revenue

Agricultural revenue is derived from CSIRO 1996/97 National 1km Grid of Agricultural Profit Surfaces. The production of this dataset involved the integration of land use data with ABS production data for all major agricultural activities. Detailed information on methods can be found in:

Hajkowicz, S. A. and M.D. Young (eds) 2002. Value of returns to land and water costs of degradation, A consultancy report to the National Land & Water Resources Audit, CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra.

As the revenue grid created by CSIRO did not contain the same land use codes as used in the 1996/97 Land Use of Australia dataset, these two grids were combined spatially. Revenue values ($/ha) were then totalled for each of the land use classes and converted to gross revenue ($) and gross revenue per square kilometre ($/km²) for the financial year 1996-1997.

The CSIRO revenue grid only provides data for agricultural activities (commodities) and therefore does not have information on revenue generated from conservation areas, forestry or urban intensive uses. Revenue data for these classes would give a better indication of land use returns for each NRM region but was unavailable during production of these profiles. It is hoped that more information will become available when the profiles are next updated.

Vegetation (and Land Use)

Derived from the Bureau of Rural Sciences Integrated Vegetation Cover, (2003) and National Land & Water Audit, 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2.