Information Needs of Rangeland NRM Regions (2007)

Product Information

The Australian Collaborative Rangeland Information System’s (ACRIS) was established in 2001 to collate and analyse data for reporting change in the Australian rangelands. ACRIS also aims to understand and explain the reasons for reported change. ACRIS is the first attempt at building a systematic picture of the current state of the rangelands in regards to how, where, and at what rate they are changing ACRIS will be reporting against six major themes in a 2007 report. These include:

• Indicators of landscape or ecosystem change
• Indicators of sustainable management
• Indicators of biodiversity change
• Indicators of sustainable water management
• Indicators of social & economic change
• Indicators of the importance of climate variability

As part of the development of the 2007 report, the National Land and Water Resources Audit has commissioned a study to investigate and report on the alignment of the reporting needs of regional bodies in rangeland areas and the National Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (NM&EF) and the ACRIS. Two related projects have been undertaken. These two projects are:

1. Assessing the information and monitoring needs for rangeland regional NRM bodies compared with the NM&EF indicators and ACRIS reporting.
2. Piloting current ACRIS reporting according to NRM regional boundaries using a pilot region (Northern Gulf in Queensland)

Five trial Natural Resource Management regions were selected for the project: Northern Gulf, Burdekin Dry Tropics, Lower Murray Darling, Alinytjara Wilurara and the southern arid portion of the Northern Territory.