Mapping in the Northern Territory
The Northern Territory’s landscapes are by and large intact and the potential to realise sustainable resource development remains largely undiminished. Accurate and reliable land use data is an important input into effective natural resource planning and management. Land use data, used in conjunction with existing land capability, climate and other data, can provide predictive capacity to assist in assessing the likely impacts of current and proposed policy affecting land use and land management.
Baseline mapping of land use in the Northern Territory is based upon the NT Digital Cadastre from 5th December 2001 and was completed in early 2003. Some properties comprise multiple land parcels or polygons and land use attributes have been allocated to each polygon. Land Use maps for the Australian Land Use and Management (ALUM) Classification (version 5) The NT Land Use Report (link in right column) is available as a PDF download.
Land Use Class allocation was generally made on the basis of the primary management objective of the land manager. This means, for example, developed residential areas within reserved areas (such as Kakadu and Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Parks ) were classed as 5.4.1 'Urban residential', the prime use being urban/residential, rather than nature conservation.
The Northern Territory Land Use dataset (link in right column ) includes multiple land use attributes for cadastral land parcels in the Peri-urban Intensive Agriculture and Northern Agricultural Zones where such information was likely to be of particular relevance to local/regional planning and/or management. The Northern Territory dataset also contains a number of additional fields not accounted for in the project Technical Manual (Bureau of Rural Sciences, 2002). Within these zones, multiple land use was mapped as a primary land use and up to two other significant land uses. Each land use was attributed using the ALUM Classification (version 5) and had the estimated areal proportion (less than or equal to 1) it occupied in the land parcel assigned. The sum of the land use proportions must equal one for each land parcel. The area for each land use is calculated from the proportional value.
For example, a 20 hectare rural block with a house and sheds, a 4 hectare irrigated orchard and the rest remnant native vegetation would be mapped as follows: Primary land use is ‘Rural residential’ (proportion 0.1); the multiple land uses being ‘Irrigated tree fruits’ (proportion 0.2) and ‘Remnant native cover’ (proportion 0.7). For the purposes of the project, 5 hectare was deemed to be the minimum area of perennial or seasonal horticulture to be considered commercially the most significant land use in the Peri-urban Intensive Agriculture Zone. In the above example, if the orchard was 5 hectare or greater ‘Irrigated tree fruits’ would be classified as the primary land use and ‘Rural residential’ as a multiple use.
