Land management within capability: a new scheme to guide sustainable land management in New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

A new evaluation scheme, land management within capability (LMwC), used to guide sustainable land management in New South Wales (NSW), is presented. The scheme semi-quantitatively categorises the potential impacts of specific land-management actions and compares these with the inherent physical capability of the land in relation to a range of land-degradation hazards. This leads to the derivation of LMwC indices, which signify the sustainability of land-management practices at the scale of individual sites up to broader regions. The LMwC scheme can be used to identify lands at greatest risk from various land-degradation hazards. It can help to guide natural resource agencies at local, regional and state levels to target priorities and promote sustainable land management across their lands. Few other schemes that assess the sustainability of a given land-management regime in a semi-quantitative yet pragmatic manner are found in the literature. The scheme has particular application for regional soil-monitoring programs and it was applied in such a program over NSW in 2008–09. The results suggested that the hazards most poorly managed across the state are wind erosion, soil acidification and soil organic carbon decline. The LMwC scheme, or at least its underlying concepts, could be readily applied to other jurisdictions.

Application of the Soil Security Concept to Two Contrasting Soil Landscape Systems—Implications for Soil Capability and Sustainable Land Management

“…The sequence of expressions does raise a number of issues needing clarification. Using soil within its capability ensures that SLM practices are being implemented [35]. If land management practices that exceed the capability are implemented, land or soil degradation occurs, and the soil condition will be deteriorated.…”

“…However, there is minimal information on how to assess these risks. Other risks include soil acidification, nutrient decline, surface crusting, wetness, aridity and decline in vegetation cover [5][6][7][8]20,35]. It is the stability of the soil condition to these threats that influences the soil capability.…”

“…The risk of soil acidification can be determined by the natural pH of the soil, the buffering capacity to acidification and the acidification pressure on the soil based on climate and land management [5]. In assessing the land degradation threats, use can be made of land capability assessments such as that developed for New South Wales (NSW) in OEH [5] and Gray et al [35].…”

“…The capacity of the soil to provide ecosystem services to meet the global challenges outlined for Soil Security. The provisioning of food, water and fibre is a critical one of these-these services need to be evaluated and monitored for each specified land use [5, 6,9,15,35]. The major land uses within the two soil landscape systems were identified and this provided an assessment of the ecosystem services provided by the soils.…”

“…The stability of the soil condition to land degradation processes resulting from the effects of land management practices and the environmental stresses on the soil. It is the susceptibility to soil and land degradation [5,6,20,35]. There are two components: IIa: Potential rate or pressure of the land degradation process based on the land features such as climate and landform and the properties that control the rate or degree of the land degradation process.…”