2019–20 SLATS Report
Introduction
Overview—Mapping and monitoring woody vegetation ecosystems
With an area of approximately 173 million hectares, Queensland is the second largest state in Australia. It is nearly five times the size of Japan and seven times the size of Great Britain. It is home to diverse flora and fauna due to its unique habitats which include extensive arid and semi-arid rangelands, and temperate, sub-tropical and tropical environments.
Queensland has more than 1400 regional ecosystems with the majority of these described as woody regional ecosystems. These woody regional ecosystems include the sparse and very sparse shrublands and woodlands of the extensive arid and semi-arid rangelands, and the sparse woodlands and mid-dense and dense forests and rainforests along the Great Dividing Range, coastal plains, and in the Cape York Peninsula and Wet Tropics bioregions. These ecosystems play a critical role in supporting biodiversity, maintaining landscape function and water quality, supporting agricultural production, sequestering and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and providing recreation and natural amenity. To conserve, protect, and sustainably use these ecosystems in a changing climate, it is essential to have spatial and temporal data and information to characterise their composition and structure and to monitor their dynamics.
In Queensland, the regional ecosystems framework provides the basis for describing the vegetation types and their remnant status. The Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) monitors woody vegetation extent, and changes to that extent due to clearing and regrowth using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery as its primary monitoring tool. A Spatial BioCondition framework has also been developed to characterise and map the condition of the state’s regional ecosystems. Combined, these initiatives provide a spatially and temporally comprehensive account of Queensland’s ecosystems based on peer-reviewed science.
About this report
The current series of SLATS reporting monitors and reports change in woody vegetation extent against a 2018 woody vegetation extent baseline which is updated annually based on mapping of woody vegetation clearing and regrowth. Additional scientific approaches have also been developed to attribute the degree of modification associated with the clearing activity and to provide estimates of woody vegetation density and when the vegetation was last disturbed or began to regrow. These approaches aim to better describe the woody vegetation that currently exists, and where and how its extent is changing.
This SLATS report for the 2019–20 monitoring period is the second change report in the current series of SLATS reporting. This report is nominally for the period August 2019 to August 2020. Regional summary data for bioregions are presented with this report. The data and reporting presented here are directly comparable with the 2018–19 report but are not comparable with previous SLATS reporting up to and including the 2017–18 SLATS report.
The mapping of new woody vegetation regrowth in Queensland has been undertaken and reported for the first time in this SLATS report. Most of the regrowth in the state was mapped and characterised in the 2018 woody vegetation extent baseline. Any new regrowth mapped and reported relates to a change in woody extent only—it does not include changes in density within areas of existing woody vegetation (e.g. thickening). New regrowth are areas of new woody vegetation that were not previously included in the woody extent baseline. The rate of regrowth occurs at a range of time scales depending on climate, management, soils, and vegetation type, therefore new regrowth mapped and reported can be from different age classes. New regrowth is only mapped and reported if it can be reliably detected using satellite imagery time-series analysis and/or can be identified in the same Sentinel-2 satellite image dates that are used for the clearing mapping. As with the clearing mapping, other high-resolution satellite imagery and field observations may also be used to help confirm mapping of new regrowth.
It is important to note that clearing activity mapped by SLATS in remnant and high-value regrowth areas does not always result in a conversion to non-remnant. The Queensland Herbarium uses SLATS data to inform remnant and high-value regrowth updates as part of regular regional ecosystem updates. These updates consider the clearing activity as well as a range of other criteria associated with the regional ecosystem mapping methodology, including the remnant definition. For data and information on change in remnant vegetation, visit Remnant regional ecosystem vegetation in Queensland.
Note: some rounding is applied to the data for reporting purposes and due to this, and also due to updates to the versions of data layers used for SLATS reporting, figures in this report may slightly differ from the data files associated with the reporting, and may also differ slightly from any previous reporting.
In this guide: