Australian Natural Resources Atlas

Publications

Australia's Natural Resources

1997-2002 and beyond
National Land and Water Resources Audit, 2002

Australia's Natural Resources Today

The complexities of natural resource management

Australia has a diversity of land uses (Figure 3). It must be recognised that most of the land has multiple uses, often co-existing somewhat uncomfortably with each other in terms of natural resource management. Major commodity groups are beef, sheep, grains, dairy, sugar cane, cotton, horticulture and fruit trees and rice (Figure 6).

Australians are familiar with those natural resources that they access in their daily lives:

Figure 6. Agricultural commodities.

Figure 6. Agricultural commodities.

However, it can be difficult to appreciate the complexity and range of interactions that occur within an ecosystem and between ecosystems within a catchment or landscape. An awareness of the whole ecosystem, albeit often subliminally, is necessary in natural resource management.

The principal resources that are affected by, and in turn affect, natural resources management decisions, either individually or in an integrated manner, are:

These represent a natural resources continuum.

The Audit has considered some of the biodiversity components that contribute to the ecosystems in which humans live. The Audit has facilitated generating the National Vegetation Information System for assessing vegetation. However, consideration has yet to be given in any depth to the role of Australia's fauna, including invertebrates, in the functioning and the services provided by Australia's landscapes.

Natural resource management decision making involves trade-offs. Ultimately, decisions involving land, water and biodiversity and their impact on people are made by managers within an economic, a social and often a political framework as well as in an environmental framework.

It is inevitable that optimum decisions from one perspective will generate potentially conflicting responses in another. Natural resource management decision making involves balancing of trade-offs between environmental, economic, social and political options.

Example of the natural resources continuum

The components of the landscape influence rainfall infiltration and run-off. Run-off is influenced by surface cover (primarily vegetation) and soil structure. Soil structure is influenced by frequency of ground disturbance. Water quality is affected by the extent of run-off and soil structure leading to soil loss, riparian change and water turbidity. Turbidity and entrained nutrients impact on feed sources for river and subsequently estuarine aquatic invertebrates and fish populations. Reduced vegetation through land clearing can bring about opportunities for increased water harvesting and conservation, but can also result in increased infiltration past the plant root zone, potentially leading to rising water tables and dryland salinity. By contrast, increased vegetation cover from newly established forestry enterprises may lead to reduced rainfall run-off and reduced deep percolation, decreasing both surface and undergroundwater conservation, lowering water tables and leading to reduced surface and groundwater resources accessible for irrigation, stock and domestic use. Excess use of surface waters and groundwaters can disrupt the biological ecosystems dependent on them, leading to loss of biodiversity. The result can be the loss of ecosystem services.

Crucial invertebrate contributors to Australian ecosystems

The mallee moths (Figure 7) in the Lepidopteran subfamily Oecophorinae are critical to recycling of nutrients in the Australian environment, particularly in the arid areas. Containing an enormous number of species, they are adapted to a diversity of habitats, especially eucalypt forest, woodland, mallee and, in more arid areas, eucalypts growing along watercourses and on rocky outcrops. A high proportion are responsible for breaking down and recycling the nutrients in dead leaves. These leaves are generally tough and leathery, resistant to fungal decay and attacks by most invertebrates except termites, poor in nitrogen, and high in phenolic compounds including tannins.

Figure 7. Mallee moth—Wingia lambertella (Wing).

Figure 7. Mallee moth- Wingia lambertella (Wing).

To understand how the components of natural resource management link together, the Audit undertook an integrated set of assessments based on understanding the links between biophysical processes and environmental impacts—in both space and time. Social and economic evaluations complete the integrated natural resources assessment approach. These integrated processes are represented below Figure 8).

Figure 8. The Audit-adopted integrated system and process-based assessments.

Figure 8. The Audit-adopted integrated system and process-based assessments.

Recognising the differing levels of susceptibility, varying response times and resilience in our regional landscapes, surface and groundwater, biota, and land use practice is the key to implementing appropriate management responses.

The Audit assessments have highlighted a wide range of natural resources issues and opportunities and the relative importance of each of these in differing parts of Australia. Some require immediate consideration, others such as nutrient export to waterways, may represent problems building up for the longer term. These issues and opportunities, their consequences and possible solutions, cannot usually be addressed in isolation. In most cases, they are interlinked with other natural resource management issues through feedback loops and interactions. The options for exploring and addressing these issues are developed in Chapter 3.