INTRODUCTION
The survey of Land Management Practices in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) Catchments is the third ABS survey to collect information using a spatial, land-based area frame. In this survey methodology the unit surveyed is a physical land holding, which has been aggregated from land parcels under common ownership or management within an individual catchment. The usual approach used in ABS surveys of agricultural or natural resource management practices is to directly attribute the information collected from agricultural businesses to a specific area.
The advantage of this methodology is that it can be used as a spatial building block, with the land-based area frame and methodology used to integrate other information related to that piece of land. It also supports a diversity of spatial outputs, allowing the data to be presented in different ways.
The survey collected information from the land owner and/or manager of the holding on a range of land management practices applied to agricultural land. These were soil testing of nutrients, fertiliser use, chemical use (including weed, pest and disease control), riparian management, surface water management and irrigation water management. Information was also collected on practices specific to particular agricultural activities.
The information in this release covers 28 of the 30 catchments draining into the GBR lagoon. Two catchments in the Cape York Natural Resource Management region have been excluded because they have minimal agricultural activity.
The release presents information on land management practices for holdings:
(i) with land mainly used for crops by size of cropping land,
(ii) with land mainly used for grazing by size of grazing land, and
(iii) in the four sub catchments of the Burnett River catchment.
The outputs by land size were produced to test the hypothesis that land owners and managers had a different take up rate of land management practices depending on the size of the holding.
The outputs by sub catchment have been produced to demonstrate to users of this data that it is possible to produce data at a relatively fine geographic level.
In this release key features of each table are discussed with some of the information presented as maps.
Users of the data are encouraged to read the explanatory notes accompanying this release.
ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS USED
ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics
GBR Great Barrier Reef
NRM natural resource management
.. nil or rounded to zero (including null cells)
Print Page
Print All