Land Use - Land Use in South Australia
Land Use in South Australia
Land Use patterns
South Australia is a land of generally low relief with the inland area largely covered by plains, sand and gibber deserts. The Mt Lofty-Flinders Ranges are the major mountain system, extending north about 800 km from Cape Jervis to the northern end of Lake Torrens. Surrounding the northern Flinders Ranges is a series of vast lakes which fill only after heavy rain, normally appearing as shallow depressions with salt or clay encrusted surfaces. The largest of these is Lake Eyre. The River Murray is the state's only major river.
South Australia enjoys hot dry summers with relatively mild nights and cool winters, with most rainfall occurring during May to August. South Australia is the driest of the Australian States and Territories. Over 80 per cent of the State receives an average annual rainfall of less than 250 mm.
Most of South Australia is arid or semi-arid. It has a population of 1.5 million with more than 70 percent of people living in the capital city, Adelaide. Most of the population lives in the southern coastal zones. Other major centres outside Adelaide are Whyalla, Mount Gambier, Port Augusta, Port Pirie and Gawler.
Only 4 percent of the State receives more than 500 mm of rain each year, with only 6 percent of the State engaged in dryland agriculture. Livestock grazing accounts for more than 50 percent (or 50 million hectares) of South Australia's land use.
Cropping is mostly of cereal crops wheat, barley and oats. Crop yields depend on the adequacy of seasonal rains and can fluctuate dramatically. In the south-east and northern agricultural districts, a range of other field crops including oilseed and grain legume crops are grown. A wide range of temperate vegetable and orchard crops are grown in the Adelaide Hills, the northern Adelaide Plains, the south-east and the Riverland. South Australia has the highest proportion of Australia's vineyards with most of the grapes used for wine making. Major wine growing areas are located in the Barossa, Clare, Riverland, Southern Districts and Coonawarra.
Livestock is dominated by sheep and in particular merinos producing medium to strong quality wool. Cattle are raised mainly in the Adelaide Hills, the lower south-east and far north districts. Dairying is concentrated in the Adelaide, lower south-east and lower Murray districts.
In 1996/97 the value of agriculture in South Australia was $3.0 billion. Cropping was the most valuable sector at $1.2 billion, then livestock industries at $0.9 billion and horticulture at $0.8 billion.
The majority (56 percent) of the 10.9 million hectares of nature conservation in South Australia is strict nature reserve. The IUCN categories wilderness areas and national parks are reasonably equal contributors representing collectively a further 36 percent of nature conservation in the State. Other protected areas including indigenous uses fall outside the cropping zone and cover 28 percent (or 27.7 million hectares) of South Australia.
Forestry is minor land use in South Australia concentrated around Mount Gambier in the south-east of the State.
South Australia leads the country in wine and brandy production and is a significant supplier of meat, wood, printing, cement and concrete products, iron and steel, motor vehicles, appliances and electrical equipment. The State has a well developed mineral industry and in recent years crude oil and natural gas have surpassed coal and iron ore as the major products. The Cooper Basin in the north-east supplies Adelaide and Sydney with natural gas and is Australia's major on-shore natural gas source. A copper and uranium mine is located at Roxby Downs in the mid north, significant amounts of iron and steel are produced at Whyalla. Coober Pedy and Andamooka are important centres for opal mining.
View an A4 size map of SA 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 SA?
| Land Use Description | Total Extent ('000 ha) | Total Extent (%) |
|---|---|---|
| No Data | 13.1 | 0 |
| Nature conservation | 10858.2 | 11 |
| Other protected areas including indigenous uses | 27668 | 28.1 |
| Minimal use | 2613.8 | 2.7 |
| Livestock grazing | 50161.3 | 51 |
| Forestry | 159.9 | .2 |
| Dryland agriculture | 5824.7 | 5.9 |
| Irrigated agriculture | 124.1 | .1 |
| Built environment | 192 | .2 |
| Waterbodies not elsewhere classified | 733.5 | .7 |
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
- Primary Industries and Resources South Australia
- 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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