48. Classifications for land management

Organised by Ben Lawson, University of Queensland. First meeting was held 30 June - 4 July 2008, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE Ben Lawson - U Queensland (Leader) Grant Wardell-Johnson - U Queensland Lee Belbin - Blatant Fabrications P/L Dan Faith - Australian Museum Simon Ferrier - NSW Dept Environment and Climate Change Paul Gioia - WA Dept Environment and Conservation Robert Hughes - Oregon State U Bill McDonald - Qld Environmental Protection Agency and Herbarium Ben Raymond - Australian Antarctic Division Juliane Sander - University of Queensland David Warton - University of NSW Kristen Williams - CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Chris Allen - Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney Don Butler - Queensland Herbarium

Jun 08 >

The initial meeting was held 30th June to 4th July 2008 at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. Participants assembled from across Australia and internationally for a week of lively and interesting discussion. Early discussions focused on the suite of available tools and techniques for developing and analysing land classification and mapping, and how these are translated into on-ground decision making. As the meeting progressed these ideas and discussions were synthesized into a conceptual framework for users to assess and improve existing map-based information. The final section of the workshop focused on illustrating the framework with worked examples of techniques that might be used, using the case study of the Walpole region in south-western Western Australia.

Two initial outcomes were agreed upon:
(1) The development of a manuscript describing the conceptual framework and illustrating its components with worked examples from the Walpole region. The manuscript seeks to provide researchers, policy-makers, and land managers with a robust, transparent and consistent approach to using map-based information, and ultimately to improve the linkages between these various users. To maximise the use of work, the target journal for the manuscript is PLoS Biology, an internationally recognized online science journal that is freely available.
(2) A proposal for a symposium has been lodged for the INTECOL 10 conference in Brisbane, August 2009. The symposium aims to bring together researchers, policy makers and land managers to discuss more effective ways of integrating ecological mapping and information to more effectively represent ecological pattern and process.
In addition to these two main outcomes, several additional projects have also been proposed and discussed examining elements of the topic in more detail. These will be examined by subsets of the working group once the main outcomes are more fully developed.

Last Updated September 2008