Visiting International Fellow - Burghard Meyer and Ralf Grabaum

Citation

Land & Water Australia. 2009. Visiting International Fellow - Burghard Meyer and Ralf Grabaum . [Online] (Updated October 12th, 2009)
Available at: http://lwa.gov.au/node/3512 [Accessed Friday 19th of March 2010 09:45:41 AM ].

Multicriteria Landscape Assessment and Optimisation

The system Multicriteria Landscape Assessment and Optimisation (MULBO) develops optimal land use combinations that are considered most likely to achieve sustainable landscapes (Meyer, Phillips & Annett 2008).

MULBO is a step forward in the evolution of approaches to deliver sustainable landscape policy objectives. It is a multi-criteria land use optimisation technique that is in use now in Europe and is of great interest to land use policy-makers in Australia.

German researchers Professors Meyer and Grabaum visited Victoria and Canberra to share the land use modelling methods to inform, and be informed by, community and stakeholder landscape preferences. The visit was financed as part of a Land & Water Australia International Fellowship.

Background

MULBO is a spatial multi-criteria decision support framework developed specifically to guide complex land use planning decisions. The potential value of MULBO rests both, in its ability to realise, in the form of GIS maps, future optimised land use scenarios, and its internal logic which provides a framework to support complex decision making; making tradeoffs unambiguous and the decision process clear and retraceable. A key feature of MULBO is the ability to provide land use scenarios that optimise economic, socio-cultural and environmental objectives based on user-supplied rule-based associations. Essentially, decision makers provide the rules by which their decisions are made and MULBO makes the decision structure explicit and provides a spatial impression of land use outcomes based on an optimised solution.

MULBO is designed to guide decisions; it does not make decisions. It is a framework that needs to be embedded within a broader decision making process. The decision structure provided by MULBO requires an analysis of where uncertainty lies in the decision process and therefore provides an opportunity to document where decisions are made on less than desirable information. Because uncertainty in the underlying data will also be propagated within the MULBO process, the outputs from MULBO will always be one of a number of inputs to an individual decision process.

In terms of natural resource management, MULBO seems best suited for use by key natural resource managers to help identify locations where investment programs would achieve the best value outcomes. Especially where these decisions need to be based on the complex and competing demands of economic, social and environmental objectives.

The MULBO process potentially provides a narrative approach to eliciting optimal environmental solutions based on qualitative assessment. Consequently, MULBO could be used to structure a dialogue with key stakeholders in a workshop context. Participation in the MULBO process does not necessarily require a high level of scientific analysis, but the qualitative assessment of technical inputs. This makes it is ideal for gaining input from non-expert, but important, stakeholders.

The visit

Prior to the visit a number of meetings were held between NR staff and DPI and CMA staff located in the Mallee region. The purpose of these meetings was to brief catchment managers from the Mallee on the opportunities presented by the MULBO approach and to determine a significant local decision problem that might offer an opportunity to trial the MULBO application and also benefit the local decision making process. Activities were also undertaken to secure relevant data and information which would form the basis of MULBO’s spatial modelling component.

A decision was jointly made to concentrate on the Lake Tyrell Basin in Victoria’s Mallee where a multiple outcome project has been a focus for investment through Sustainable Landscapes.

Following the arrival of the German scientists a number of NR staff took part in activities in relation to the assessment of MULBO as a tool to support resource managers faced with multiple outcome decision problems. These activities included a well attended presentation, individual and group consultation sessions with the two visitors and a field trip to the Lake Tyrell Basin in Victoria’s Mallee. The Tyrrell basin in Victoria’s Mallee is a highly productive agricultural area where wheat and barley production dominate.

Within the Mallee there are some significant stands of remnant vegetation, however, these tend to be associated with low fertility, poorer agricultural soils. Within the better agricultural land, large areas of vegetation have been removed. Consequently, smaller stands of vegetation in these areas can be considered high value assets due to their comparative rarity. The area is underlain by saline groundwater which in wet years has bought salt horizons very close to the surface. In many places agricultural production is impossible due to saline watertables that are close to the soil surface.

A fieldtrip was attended by staff from NRS and NRP as well as the two German visitors. On day one, field trippers drove around five hundred kilometres from DPI’s Irymple office south to Ouyen and then on a circuit around Lake Tyrell and returned to Mildura. On day two field trippers took part in a workshop with local land managers which focussed on the potential for integration between MULBO and regional natural resource decision making. Highlights included a visit to a farmer’s property where the property owner gave a presentation of precision farming methodologies. The focus on high resolution mapping of crop yield was used to underpin a farm level cost-benefit analysis. The results of this analysis were being used to maximise crop yield as well as identify opportunities for alienating low yielding land for biodiversity plantings and diversification into perennial salt bush plantings. It was evident in a number of locations that grazing sheep on salt bush was being used as an alternative land use where potential crop yield was restricted by soils with high salinity or low water retention capacity.