A landscape hazard assessment for wetlands in the Great Barrier Reef catchment

The assessment method provides a conceptual and operational framework for assessing land use hazard (potential for harm) to the functions and values of lacustrine and palustrine wetlands in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) catchment.

This assessment establishes hazards to wetlands from anthropogenic land-use within the landscape. It provides a mechanism for conceptually linking land-uses and pressures within the DPSIR (Driver, Pressure, State, Impact, Response) framework by:

• establishing a characterisation of pressures arising from land-use and infrastructure drivers with the potential to affect palustrine and lacustrine wetland ecosystems and align land-use/pressures associations within the framework
• providing weightings for functional land-use categories (based on the pressure characterisation) to be used in a wetland hazard mapping process
• attributing each mapped wetland (based on the latest Queensland wetland mapping information) with a modelled level of hazard from land-use pressures
• attributing hazard from individual pressures and overall hazard (for combined land-use and infrastructure) to all areas within the GBR catchment.

This broadscale GBR hazard assessment is undertaken at a landscape-scale as delineated by the chosen area of interest – the Great Barrier Reef catchment area.

The underlying framework aims to establish causal linkages between:

• land-use drivers
• pressures
• the state of wetlands.

The approach involves a number of key steps:

• identifying and defining pressures to wetland ecosystems
• developing a pressure charactrisation
• grouping land-uses together based on their similarity
• identifying infrastructure and finer scale land-uses driving pressures to wetlands (not accounted for in broadscale land-use mapping)
• developing a pressure profile for each land-use group, assigning a land-use pressure weighting based on the strength of the relationship between the land use and each individual pressure 
• generating a hazard score for each reporting ut based on its land-use composition and infrastructure content
• generating maps for each pressure, combined land-use pressure, infrastructure pressure and combined land-use/infrastructure pressures.

This method assesses the potential ‘hazards’ to wetlands from land-use drivers and does not identify ‘risk’. A hazard is something likely to cause harm, in this case to a wetland. Risk, on the other hand, is the product of ‘likelihood’ and the ‘consequence’ of exposure to the hazard. At the landscape scale, at which the GBR assessment is conducted, the hazard arising from land-use is characterised.

Input criteria is based on 15 land use groupings, and 22 individual pressures grouped into five broad classes: inputs (direct/indirect); harvesting; changes to the water regime; biological introductions and perpetuation; habitat disturbance/alteration.

• Land-use and infrastructure mapping, Aquatic Conservation Assessment (ACA) and other spatial data.
• Conceptual models linking land-use hazards to wetland pressures.
• Expert and stakeholder information.

High level expert knowledge of spatial analysis.

Spatial and non-spatial data, a database platform for data storage, hazard assessment, a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform for result presentation and interpretation.

A mapped measure of hazard for each spatial unit, and a report.

• Decision support.
• Inform management interventions.
• Prioritise targeted monitoring, and other management needs.
• Input to monitoring and assessment reports for the GBR.
• Disturbance characterisation and hazard assessment assisting prioritisations.

Outputs relevant to natural resource managers including regional NRM bodies, State government agencies and local government.

• Widely applicable.
• Cost effective, doesn't require any additional data collection.
• Flexible.

• Hazard levels come with a degree of subjectivity.
• Not all hazards are considered (e.g. fire, hydrological connectivity).
• Proximity to hazard not considered.
• Uncertainty associated with spatial data quality, scale and conceptually.

This page should be cited as:

Department of Environment, Science and Innovation, Queensland (2020) A landscape hazard assessment for wetlands in the Great Barrier Reef catchment, WetlandInfo website, accessed 30 August 2024. Available at: https://wetlandinfo.des.qld.gov.au/wetlands/resources/tools/assessment-search-tool/a-landscape-hazard-assessment-for-wetlands-in-the-great-barrier-reef-catchment/