Land use and ecosystems - In Search of Sustainability

Environmental Engineering Reference

In-Depth Information

A significant feature of the future will encompass rural communities

working with biophysical scientists, conservation biologists, sociologists and

economists to build new systems. The innovative use of on-farm measure-

ment, coupled with simulation models to design and examine alternative

operations in terms of both production and impact on the natural resource,

will be an increasingly important tool of discovery.

Few commercial farming and other land use systems can control the

causes of land degradation while generating farm incomes that can sustain

rural communities. We need to rethink and redesign our use of agricultural

landscapes in ways that maintain their biotic integrity but still provide for

their profitable, sustainable use.

The challenge is to come up with biodiversity-based solutions for recon-

structing the Australian landscape and ensuring a sustainable future for

rural and urban communities alike .

Acknowledgments

This chapter draws heavily from the work of Matt Colloff and the authors in

the development of an unpublished paper prepared for the workshop,

'Murray-Darling Basin 2051: Setting the vision for long-term biodiversity

objectives for the Murray-Darling Basin ' held in Canberra on 25 and 26

October 2001 . The comments, discussions and suggestions of many of our

colleagues in CSIRO, particularly Tom Hatton, Glen Walker, Richard Stirza-

ker, Brian Keating and Ted Lefroy which have been used extensively in this

work are gratefully acknowledged, as is the editorial assistance of Hester

Gascoigne of Hester Gascoigne and Associates Pty Ltd. The National Land

and Water Resources Audit and particularly Adrian Webb and Warwick

McDonald provided access to extensive sets of reports and papers including

Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000. Any errors of analysis and

interpretation and text are, however, the responsibility of the authors.