A contemporary assessment of landcover disturbance for the Australian Continent
by Dean Graetz, Murray Wilson and Susan Campbell,
CSIRO Earth Observation Centre,
Australia.
This electronic document reports a scientific assessment of the current state of the landcover of the Australian continent undertaken by CSIRO. Through this study, we wanted to establish a continental picture of the extent and severity of landcover disturbance, the changes in the vegetation and soils, as of the beginning of this decade.
We undertook this study to provide a contemporary understanding and to relate the findings to the continuing problem of the loss of biodiversity. We publish the findings in this format to make them accessible to all who are interested.
How you proceed through this publication is entirely up to you.
We want to communicate to you four messages:
We tell this story in two different formats, and in one of these formats, this compact disk, we tell the story in two different ways.
Our story is told in printed format as a report entitled
'Landcover disturbance over the Australian continent: A contemporary assessment'.
by R.D. Graetz, M.A. Wilson and S.K. Campbell, 1995.
Biodiversity Series, Paper No. 7.
A copy of the printed report can be obtained from the Biodiversity Unit of DEST.
When you see highlighted text (as in the last sentence), you may click on it to link to further or related information on the CDROM.
NB: Throughout this report you may click on small pictures like this to see a larger version.
The second format of our story is the one you are using now.
With an electronic document such as this you may navigate at will through the sections using the "go forward" or "go back" facilities of your browsing software, and by clicking on highlighted words or phrases. Additionally you may use other features of your browsing software to, for example, print a section of interest.
At the bottom of each electronic page you will see three buttons. One button returns you to the "Contents" page, the other two enable you to step forwards or backwards through the whole document just as you would with a paper book.
Apart from the electronic document, the CDROM version contains copies of the actual data used to arrive at our conclusions. This summary of the project is a critical component of the scientific culture. Science is a process of testable inquiry and it is important that the findings of a research project are available for scrutiny by others.
However, this data-only version of the story is unlikely to interest the majority of readers. For more information about the datasets provided on the CDROM refer to the general readme file and the readme file in the datasets directory.
The complete, and therefore longest way, is the narrative path by which the project will unfold in a logical sequence. At the end, you will have the best overview of what we did, why we did it, what we found, and what it all means.
However, with this format of electronic document, the reader is free to move to whatever section desired.
Before you continue with Looking Around, we raise a number of points.
Whatever path you take through this electronic publication, you are reading a document prepared by scientists. This is a scientific document prepared and reviewed in the traditions of applied scientific research - to provide the best answers possible to the significant questions of our time.
The second point is that it is not common for scientific research to be reported in a widely accessible format like compact disk. It is not common, but it is not impossible to do so. Dramatic changes in technology over the last three years now facilitate communication between all sectors of society that was previously not possible. We believe that all the components of this story, objectives, methods and results, may be of interest to a wide audience. Therefore, we have embraced the technologies necessary to tell the story of this project in this enduring format.
Lastly, the style in which we write is personal and direct and in contrast to the majority of science writing. This contrast is not because scientists are all dull and boring, without passion and character. Far from it. Scientists nearly always write for other scientists: both parties know and understand the personal commitment to scientific research and the agonies and ecstasies in conducting it so they concentrate on only the objective details.
In this publication, we are communicating with non-scientists (we think) so we have included details of the strengths and weaknesses of the methods that were used and the difficulties that were encountered.
Moreover, we write in a personal and direct style because we want you to be aware of how important we think this issue is, and how good or bad a job we have made of the study.
Does a passion for your subject diminish the objectivity with which you can conduct research? It can; but we believe it hasn't. If you are interested in thinking about this further, then read the small section called A Personal Note .
Finally, this document contains many images. They are not included just for cosmetic reasons. Each image reinforces points that were made in the text. Consider each image carefully and make a systematic effort to interpret what you see. If you do this, we are certain it will increase your enjoyment of this electronic document.
