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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.

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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 81 - 90 of 105
Figure 81 New digital soil map of Australia’s soil orders made possible using the SoilDataFederator
Figure 82 Field data collection of soil properties is essential to the work of the TERN’s Surveillance and Landscape Observatories
Figure 83 (a) Digital Earth Australia land cover in Australia (2015), classified for use in the National Land Account. (b) Detail for Alligator Rivers, Kakadu National Park. (c) Detail for Gunbower-Koondrook-Perricoota Forest Icon Site
Map showing that cultivated areas are concentrated in the population and farming regions, like the Western Australian wheat belt and the Riverina.

Notes:

  1. Definitions of land cover classes are given in ABS (2021e).
  2. See case study: Ecosystem accounting in a protected area

Sources: DEA land cover (Landsat) (2021); map projection: Australian Albers GDA94 (ICSM n.d.)

For more information, go toResources
Figure 84 The 4 themes of the land accounts
Figure 85 Ecosystem types identified in the Gunbower-Koondrook-Perricoota Forest Icon Site in 2015 (top), and reference and modified states in the ‘inland floodplain eucalypt forests and woodlands’ ecosystem type (bottom) showing the causes of transitions between states and how that impacted the flow of ecosystem services in a small timber coupe in 2015
Figure 86 Water Observations from Space filtered summary product for Australia, derived from water observations from 1987 to 2014
Table 1 Native vegetation change matrix comparing extant NVIS datasets published in 2012 (version 4.1) and 2020 (version 6.0)

Stock

Removed (ha)

Remnant (ha)

Regrowth/modified (ha)

Not applicable (ha)

Opening stock

(NVIS 4.1 published in 2012)

100,480,723

665,380,436

1,047,420

2,491,405

Removed

0

−1,262,780

301,626

−32,091

Remnant

1,262,780

0

241,793

−141,480

Regrowth/modified

−301,626

−241,793

0

−611,356

Not applicable

32,091

141,480

611,356

0

Closing stock

(NVIS 6.0 published in 2020)

101,473,968

664,017,343

2,202,195

1,706,478

ha = hectare; MVG = major vegetation group; MVS = major vegetation subgroup; NVIS = National Vegetation Information System

Notes:

  1. Areas are based on NVIS extant (‘present’) vegetation mapping. Specifically, NVIS v4.1 MVS (DSEWPaC 2012) and NVIS v6.0 MVG (DAWE 2020g), using the following categories:
    ‘Remnant’ is the area within the ‘present’ extent of MVSs in NVIS v4.1 (DSEWPaC 2012) or the MVGs in NVIS v6.0 (DAWE 2020g). In the case of NVIS v6.0, any one of the MVGs listed as ‘remnant native vegetation’ in Figure 2.
    ‘Removed’ is the area within the ‘present’ extent of MVSs in NVIS v4.1 (DSEWPaC 2012) or the MVG in NVIS v6.0 (DAWE 2020j): Cleared, non-native vegetation, buildings.
    ‘Regrowth/modified’ is the area within the ‘present’ extent of MVSs in NVIS v4.1 (DSEWPaC 2012) or MVG in NVIS v6.0  (DAWE 2020j): Regrowth, modified native vegetation.
    ‘Not applicable’ comprises Sea and estuaries, and Unknown/no data.

2. NVIS is an aggregation of each jurisdiction’s mapping of native vegetation extent, and the timestamps of these source datasets are highly variable.

For more information, go toNative vegetation
Table 2 Predicted stocks of soil organic carbon if there were no land use, and losses due to land use, for selected soil depths, Australia, 2010
Table 3 Estimated soil organic carbon stock in Australia’s topsoil (0–30 centimetres depth) in 3 fractions
Table 4 Vulnerability to soil organic carbon loss from Australia’s topsoil (0–30 centimetres depth) by soil classification order

Soil classification order

Vulnerability to soil organic carbon loss (index)

Extent of soil class (hectares, thousands)

Extent of soil class as a percentage of extent of all Australian soils

Percentage of extent of soil class modified by land use

Minimum

Mean

Maximum

Organosols

0.34

0.84

1.29

1,253

0.16

4.4

Podosols

0.28

0.66

1.44

1,887

0.25

39.9

Kurosols

0.26

0.65

1.44

11,120

1.45

44.9

Ferrosols

0.24

0.53

1.39

5,883

0.77

24.2

Dermosols

0.20

0.50

1.48

23,302

3.04

25.1

Anthroposols

0.31

0.49

1.00

44

0.01

100.0

Chromosols

0.20

0.43

1.43

41,172

5.37

41.2

Sodosols

0.19

0.41

1.49

55,636

7.25

35.8

Hydrosols

0.19

0.40

1.42

22,553

2.94

7.8

Kandosols

0.19

0.40

1.45

163,421

21.30

11.9

Tenosols

0.19

0.40

1.54

113,294

14.77

3.3

Rudosols

0.19

0.39

1.48

155,505

20.27

1.7

Calcarosols

0.18

0.37

1.24

69,936

9.12

10.0

Vertosols

0.18

0.30

1.33

102,249

13.33

19.9

Note: Vulnerability is an index derived from the ratio of particulate organic carbon (POC) to the sum of humus (HOC) and resistant organic carbon (ROC).

Sources: Soil organic carbon loss vulnerability (Viscarra Rossel et al. 2019b, Viscarra Rossel et al. 2019a); Australian soil classification national grid available from the Australian Collaborative Land Evaluation Program (ACLEP: CSIRO 2021a); soil classification orders (Isbell 2002) interpreted by Ashton & McKenzie (2001) from the digital atlas compiled by the Bureau of Rural Sciences (2000) from scans of the original mapping by Northcote et al. (1968). Percentages modified by land use (vegetation clearing) in each soil classification order derive from extant Major Vegetation Groups in National Vegetation Information System v6.0 (DAWE 2020g), as shown in Figure 12.

For more information, go toCarbon