Home

We recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the sovereign Traditional Owners of Australia and thank them for their stewardship of this Country, its lands, waters and skies. We respectfully acknowledge their culture and customary practices, and pay respect to their Ancestors, Elders and future leaders.

For the first time, the State of the Environment report includes a strong Indigenous narrative across all 12 thematic chapters, a narrative crafted through recognising the leadership, collaboration and authorship of Indigenous Australians who continue their connection as Traditional Owners to their lands, waters and skies.

Click to view the State of the Environment report

 

On 28 March 2025 the government assumed a Caretaker role. Information on websites maintained by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water will be published in accordance with the Guidance on Caretaker Conventions until after the conclusion of the caretaker period.

Due to technical issues, graphs, maps and tables are currently not displaying within the main content, however, are available via the chapter resources navigation bar. We are working on a solution to resolve the issue.

Graphs, maps and tables

Showing results 21 - 30 of 105
Figure 21 Modelled soil organic carbon stocks in (a) 1800 and (b) 2010, in the top 2 metres of Australia’s soils
Figure 22 Areas of potential vulnerability to soil organic carbon loss from Australia’s topsoil (0–30 centimetres depth)
Map showing that the most vulnerable areas are Tasmania, the south-east including South Australia, and south-western Western Australia.

Note: Vulnerability is an index derived from the ratio of particulate organic carbon to the sum of humus and resistant organic carbon. Australia’s biomes (outlined in black) are derived from the terrestrial ecoregions of the world map (Olson et al. 2001), aligned with the regions delineated in the Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (Thackway & Cresswell 1995) v7 (DoE 2016).

Sources: Viscarra Rossel et al. (2019b), Viscarra Rossel et al. (2019a); map projection: Australian Albers GDA94 (ICSM n.d.)

For more information, go toCarbon
Figure 23 TERN OzFlux ecosystem research network set up to provide Australian, New Zealand and global ecosystem modelling communities with consistent observations of energy, carbon and water exchange between the atmosphere and key Australian and New Zealand ecosystems
Map illustrating the network; towers are found in the south-east, north Queensland, the Northern Territory and in southern Western Australia. Ecological surveillance points are more numerous.

TERN = Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network

Notes:

  1. Dark blue dots show the locations of TERN flux station towers across Australia and New Zealand, that form part of a global network.
  2. Small green dots show the locations of the TERN ecological surveillance plot network across Australia
  3. Orange squares show the locations of remote-sensing calibration-validation sites, including several that are co-located with flux towers across Australia.
  4. The images show examples of the varied activities and infrastructures managed by TERN across Australia.

Source: Adapted from Cleverly et al. (2019)

For more information, go toCarbon
Figure 24 Timeseries showing mulga dynamics near Alice Springs. From top: March 2012 (wet period); June 2015 (dry period); July 2020 (following heatwaves – some mulga died and some recovered during the subsequent wet period)
Figure 25 TERN OzFlux tower at Tumbarumba; this tower and ground equipment were impacted by the 2019–20 bushfires
Figure 26 Locations and extent of major types of land use in Australia, 2015–16
Map showing that large areas of inland Western Australia are classified as conservation, resource protection or minimal use, whereas much of the inland of the eastern half is classified grazing native vegetation. The farming areas are listed as dryland cr

Notes:

  1. Numbers in brackets are percentages of total land use in 2015–16.
  2. Definitions for major types of land use are given in ABS (2021e), and are based on the Australian Land Use and Management Classification, v8 (ABARES 2016)

Sources: ABARES (2021a); map projection: Australian Albers GDA94 (ICSM n.d.)

For more information, go toLand use
Figure 27 Reductions and additions in area of major types of land use between 2010–11 and 2015–16, labelled with change as a percentage of 2010–11 area for each type of land use
Bar graph showing that, among many categories, ‘grazing native vegetation’ and ‘other minimal use’ have overall fallen, ‘managed resource protection’ and ‘nature conservation’ have net increased.

Notes:

  1. Reductions (negative numbers) and additions (positive numbers) in major land uses.
  2. Numbers at the end of each bar are percentages of the total land area in 2010–11 for that land-use type.
  3. Definitions for major types of land use are given in ABS (2021e), based on the preliminary data release for the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ National Land Account Experimental Estimates, 2016, and are based on the Australian Land Use and Management Classification, v8 (ABARES 2016).
  4. The land use data are preliminary and subject to change.

Source: ABARES (2021b)

For more information, go toLand use
Figure 28 Changes in categories of land-use intensity between 2010–11 and 2015–16, showing (a) area of change and (b) percentage, by state and territory
Bar graphs showing that Queensland and South Australia have seen the most land go from relatively natural to extensive production (over half a million hectares each), and New South Wales has seen the most land go from relatively natural to intensive produ

Notes:

  1. Categories of land-use intensity are defined as follows (conversions from water not shown; deintensification conversions not shown):

Relatively natural uses: nature conservation, managed resource protection, other minimal use

Extensive production uses: grazing native vegetation, production native forests

Intensive production uses: grazing modified pastures, plantation forests, dryland cropping, dryland horticulture, irrigated pastures, irrigated cropping, irrigated horticulture

Urban and other intensive uses: urban intensive uses, intensive horticulture and animal production, rural residential and farm infrastructure, mining and waste

  1. Definitions for major types of land use are given in ABS (2021e), and are based on the Australian Land Use and Management Classification, v8 (ABARES 2016).

Source: Adapted from Tables 1.11–1.18 (ABS 2021e); note that the data are regarded as preliminary and subject to change.

For more information, go toLand use
Figure 29 Net greenhouse gas emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry, by subsector, 1990–2021
Figure 30 Net greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, forestry and fishing, and mining, 1990–2019