An adaptive framework for monitoring biodiversity in rangelands

Cooperative Research Centre for the Sustainable Development of Tropical Savannas

An analysis of threatening processes in the rangelands is used to identify the questions that a rangeland monitoring framework might be expected to answer as well as providing guidance for relevant management responses. The most significant are to seek to identify the particular impacts upon rangeland biodiversity of:

Existing pastoral monitoring programs operated by the States and Territories do not provide data with the content or environmental comprehensiveness needed to address these important issues.

We conclude that a system capable of answering significant questions in regard to biological diversity over the long term should include a number of components, including:

We identify a minimum set of 11 indicators to provide a starting configuration for an ultimately useful scheme. We acknowledge that these indicators do not directly address all of the important issues in the rangelands and the utility of many of them for indexing adverse processes or status of biodiversity is unproven. However, together, they represent a consensus of opinion on those threads of biodiversity regarded as the most prone to change.

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