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Abstract

Flora monitoring throughout the Australian rangelands has been intrinsically linked to rangeland

management throughout grazing history. Although this monitoring is often carried out daily on an

informal scale by land managers, broadscale monitoring that attempts to capture long-term change has

been the responsibility of government departments. The Rangeland Assessment Program (RAP) has

been monitoring 163 sites across the Western Catchment of New South Wales (NSW) since 1989.

During this time valuable data has been collected from across the Catchment generating information

on biomass changes, species mixes, groundcover and woody species dynamics. This data is provided

to landholders throughout the Catchment on an annual basis.

Whilst data has been collected over the past 22 years, little has been done to liberate this data for

state-wide reporting requirements. This paper seeks to outline the importance of data liberation of

long term flora monitoring throughout Australia’s rangelands, using the Rangeland Assessment

Program as a case study. These trends will become an important part of setting management targets

for the Western Catchment’s looming Catchment Action Plan (CAP) reporting requirements.