Land Use - Land Use in Northern Territory
Land Use in Northern Territory
Land Use patterns
About four-fifths of the Northern Territory lies within the tropics, with the northern part affected by monsoonal influences giving rise to a wet (October to April) and a dry (May to September) season. Much of the southern three-quarters of the Territory is desert or semi-arid plain. The Macdonnell Ranges crosses the Territory in central Australia and the well-known monolith, Uluru (Ayers Rock) is near the south-west corner of the Territory.
The Northern Territory has a population of 0.2 million with Darwin, the capital city, the largest population centre.
The major land uses in the Northern Territory are livestock grazing and other protected areas including indigenous uses. These two land uses account for nearly 90 percent of the Territory's area.
The agricultural sector is dominated by the beef cattle industry and the fruit growing industry (mainly mangoes and bananas). Seventy-two million hectares or 53 percent of the Northern Territory is used for agriculture although less than half a percent of this is for activities other than grazing of native pasture. On the nearly 40000 ha not used for extensive grazing, horticulture contributed $23 million and cropping $5 million in 1996/97. Total agricultural produce was valued at $264 million with 86 percent contributed by the livestock industry ($226 million), the bulk from cattle slaughterings.
Forty-eight million hectares or 36 percent of the Northern Territory is for traditional indigenous uses. This follows federal legislation in 1977, enabling aboriginal descendants to claim traditional ownership of vacant crown land. Nearly 4 percent of the Territory is nature conservation, with national parks the main component. The Kakadu and Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Parks are managed jointly by the Commonwealth and their Aboriginal owners.
Important contributors to the Territory's economy are mining and tourism.
View an A4 size map of NT 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 NT?
| Land Use Description | Total Extent ('000 ha) | Total Extent (%) |
|---|---|---|
| No Data | 17.4 | 0 |
| Nature conservation | 5041.7 | 3.7 |
| Other protected areas including indigenous uses | 48419.5 | 36 |
| Minimal use | 8712.7 | 6.5 |
| Livestock grazing | 71535.4 | 53.1 |
| Forestry | 4.5 | 0 |
| Dryland agriculture | 39.3 | 0 |
| Irrigated agriculture | .5 | 0 |
| Built environment | 136.3 | .1 |
| Waterbodies not elsewhere classified | 734.5 | .5 |
Where are the agricultural lands in Australia?
Link to a description or map of agricultural lands in Australia.
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
Further information
- Link to the map maker to view national land use information
- Link to the Australian Natural Resources Data Library to download national and regional scale land use data
- Northern Territory Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment
- Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
- Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
- Australian Bureau of Statistics
- Geoscience Australia
- Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics
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