Ecosystem condition
A landscape image of a grey box gum and grain stubble, St Arnaud, Victoria Credit: S Prober, CSIRO
About
An ecosystem’s condition shows how healthy it is over time. This is measured as the departure of a location in space and time from its reference condition.
Ecosystem condition data builds on ecosystem extent. Ecosystem condition is an input to Biodiversity accounts that use habitat-based assessment approaches.
Measuring ecosystem condition
The Habitat Condition Assessment System (HCAS) uses satellite remote sensing of ecosystem characteristics and spatial mapping of high integrity ecosystem reference sites to measure ecosystem condition.
Data are provided for:
- ecosystem condition variables (remotely sensed ecosystem characteristics)
- ecosystem condition (three types – habitat condition, ecosystem site condition, connectivity-adjusted condition).
Additional information
Supplementary data is available that links ecosystem condition to the extent of ecosystem states across the Australian continent (terrestrial, coastal and freshwater realms only).
This dataset is based on the Australian Ecosystem Models framework and includes information on:
- extent of archetypes (that describe reference ecosystem condition states for Australia)
- extent of ecosystem states (in reference or five modified condition states) for Australia for 18 years.
The five modified condition states derive from an expert-informed classification of ecosystem condition aligned with the Vegetation Assets, States and Transitions (VAST) narrative framework.
AusEcoModels
These data comprise the HCAS 3.0 (1988-2022) base model estimate of habitat condition (250m grid), National Connectivity Index (NCI) 2.0, 3-year average annually rolling epochs of HCAS and NCI from 1990 to 2022, trends and other derivatives for continental Australia.