Desertification causes carbon to be released in the atmosphere,
and worldwide the process contributes around 4% of carbon
emissions. It undermines livelihoods of up to 250 million
vulnerable people, creating conflict, humanitarian crises and
environmental refugees. In Australia, our desert fringes are
predominantly pastoral, which makes them vulnerable to
desertification through over-grazing and land degradation. Many
small communities and individual livelihoods are dependent on the
landscape’s resilience to desertification.
Through the Australian
Collaborative Rangelands Information System (ACRIS) we can monitor
desertification and prevent
serious deleterious changes. The system records and reports
on environmental, economic and social changes in the rangelands.
The information system looks at how the rangelands function –
their level of vegetation cover, the landscape’s ability to
take up water, provide forage for pastoralism, the impacts of
rainfall, drought, erosion, fire and grazing and the human and
ecological responses to all three. It brings together rangeland monitoring data sets
from state and Northern Territory government sources to create a
national picture of the condition of our rangelands. In 2008, ACRIS
produced a landmark national review (see link below) of condition
and trends across Australia’s rangelands – the first
objective survey of the dry regions of the continent as a whole. It
found that Australian deserts are coping with grazing impacts. In
fact, ACRIS has evidence that desert vegetation cover – and
hence carbon storage – may actually be improving. With this
level of understanding about what is really going on, small
communities and people whose livelihoods depends on these regions
can take the right management approaches to supply food and fibre products
sustainbly, help curb greenhouse emissions,
and protect our
native species and landscapes. Gary Bastin, ACRIS coordinator, was
awarded a CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Divisional Award in
recognition of "intellectual leadership and senior authorship of
Rangelands 2008 - Taking the pulse as well as the
effective coordination of ACRIS and its Management Committee". The
level of collaboration required to get these results will serve as
an international model for monitoring desertification.
Link to Rangelands 2008 - Taking the pulse, available
from the Australian Government Department of the Environment,
Water, Heritage and the Arts:
http://www.environment.gov.au/land/publications/acris/report08.html
Details of the Management Committee for ACRIS are available
here:
http://www.environment.gov.au/land/rangelands/acris/index.html
