A vegetation map was produced for the Northern Rivers Catchment Management Authority (NRCMA) by integrating two products undertaken for the northern Comprehensive Regional Assessment (CRA), namely the forest ecosystem model and API coverage. The work was undertaken by Eco Logical Australia Pty Ltd in 2005. The new product represents a substantial improvement over the original forest ecosystem model as it provides nomenclatural consistency between forest ecosystem types and API polygon labels, includes remnant vegetation not originally captured by the CRAFTI API project, improves the spatial rigour of forest ecosystem distribution, and introduces a number of new ecosystems based on fine scale API and expert advice. The map incorporates 167 ecosystems covering a combined area of 3,332,900 ha, about 67% of the NRCMA region. It includes dry and moisttableland types, rainforest and wet escarpment brushbox and eucalypt forests, dry foothills eucalypt forest, rugged gorges woodlands, and non-eucalypt coastal types. The map includes a table which lists areal estimates for each ecosystem, including area outside the NRCMA region and pre-1750 area.;
Albeit an improved product, the final map was assembled from two existing layers which have major limitations on private land, including an unsuitable vegetation;
classification and a broad and often unreliable API layer. It is thus recommended that the product be used only in the interim by the NRCMA to support identification;
and prioritisation of high conservation value vegetation, and that any attempt to reconcile the map with local landscapes be done with due caution.;
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The original NRCMA Veg layer is in grid format but was converted to polygons. See data history section.;
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Data custodian - Northern Rivers CMA;
VIS_ID 524
