Get reliable rangeland science

The NSW Department of Land and Water Conservation manages the Rangeland Assessment Program (RAP) in NSW rangelands. • There are almost 340 ground based sites, on seven range types, which have been recorded annually since the early 1990s. The RAP program is therefore the most advanced of any of the range monitoring programs throughout Australia. • The emphasis within the RAP is on reporting changes in both short and long term vegetation and soil attributes at a regional or range type scale. There is no intention of being able to report at the lease scale. • The attributes assessed at each site include: species lists of all vascular plants; biomass, frequency and botanical composition of pasture species, density of shrubs, precent canopy cover of trees and shrubs; and soil surface characteristics. • The RAP system grew out of earlier work of the Soil Conservation Service of NSW, in which the natural resources of the state’s rangelands were catalogued and mapped into 251 landsystems. • The RAP ground based system is not designed to meet the demands of any single Act. Rather it is designed to meet a broad demand for information on changes in the rangeland resource, particularly that relating to the conservation of native vegetation. It also forms a strong basis for work aimed at improving rangeland management practices in NSW rangelands. • There is no operational remote sensing program to monitor changes in NSW rangelands. source: summary points