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Monitoring landscape health
The Issue
Humans continue to impact and change the health of our globe. As ecologists, we face challenges in developing and promoting the use of robust monitoring procedures that can detect changes in landscape health before it become irreversible. Specifically, we need monitoring methods that can detect changes in landscape cover and condition, and its spatial heterogeneity, especially at scales useful for environmental reporting. Field-based monitoring at fine-scales has been occurring in northern Australia for a number of years, and some newer satellite-based techniques detect general changes in vegetation cover. However, new landscape metrics or indicators are needed that more directly relate these changes in landscape patterns to changes in processes. Then we will have the capacity to better understand flow-on effects and predict the outcomes of management actions on landscape health.
CSIRO Research
Our current research aims to identify simple, but robust, indicators of savanna health that can be measured on the ground and by remote sensing techniques. Ground-based indicators using simple observations on the condition of the soil surface have proven useful for assessing landscape health. These indicators were developed and verfied by David Tongway (CSIRO Senior Fellow) in a procedure called “Landscape Function Analysis” (LFA). We have been exploring the usefulness of other field-based indicators of landscape health such as the cover and size of perennial vegetation patches. Bob Karfs from the Queensland Department of Primary Industry and Energy has also found LFA useful for monitoring the health of rangelands on field sites in the savannas of northern Australia, and has also been using satellite images of these savannas acquired over a series of years to monitor changes and trends in vegetation cover. This monitoring is at the regional scale. These changes in vegetation cover have proven useful, but lack a linkage to how landscapes function as healthy systems to retain vital natural resources. Our research, in collaraboration with Bob, aims to develop remotely sensed indicators of “landscape leakiness” that are linked to how healthy landscapes function. So far, we have developed two leakiness indices that are applicable to simple savanna hillslopes. We are currently developing a third leakiness index that combines remotely-sensed vegetation patch data (cover and spatial configuration) with digital elevation data. This leakiness index will be applicable to landscapes the size of watersheds. We are also addressing questions such as what kind of remotely sensed imagery to use and where in the landscape to monitor indicators of landscape leakiness.
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Collaborators
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