Flinders Ranges
I have chosen six examples from across the continent to illustrate the issues discussed above. The six scenes are placed in one of four classes to indicate the nature of the landcover changes that can be expected: The Old, The Desperate, The Marginal and The New.
The first area examined is the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, one example of The Old rangelands. These very beautiful landscapes have been subject to pastoral landuse for approximately 150 years and they show it. A two-scene mosaic is included with the data on this CD-ROM covering the entire Ranges and spanning the period 08/02/74 to 19/01/89. Only a small sub-scene is displayed here containing landmarks such as Wilpena Pound in the centre left of the image, familiar to any visitor to this area.
Use your browser to open each image in a new window to compare them.
The landscapes are spectacular in the intricacy of their geological formation. In a flat country like Australia, these landscapes show considerable relief. The soils are skeletal, the landcover sparse, and the rocky backbone of the Ranges is everywhere exposed. For these reasons, this scene is a very rigorous test of the use of satellite data to detect and interpret landcover change. Nevertheless landcover change is there. The Difference FCC image shows landcover change both in greenness (red) and in amount (blacks and whites). It is quite remarkable how the details of the highly convoluted topography drop out of the Difference image.
Within this image there are changes in greenness of the vegetation in the creek floodouts and there is a loss of cover due to a wildfire within Wilpena Pound itself. Losses of cover are detectable south of the Pound, near the town of Hawker. Only very small areas of landcover loss (dark tones) associated with pastoral landuse are visible in the centre right of the Difference FCC. These changes represent a significant decline in the cover of pasture species because of overgrazing on an already overgrazed area. Even in this high profile area of old rangelands, the inadequacies of some pastoral managers remain.
