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Identification of Significant Sites and Processes
[Legal and Administrative Instruments and Procedures]
[Awareness of Issues]
[Development and Implementation of Management Prescriptions]
[Monitoring and Indicators]
Making Inventory Data available to Land Managers
[Reconnaissance Inventories]
[Systematic and Thematic Inventories]
[The Classification - based Approach]
[The Georegional approach]
[Detailed Inventories]
Whereas most geoconservation inventories are typically published (or at least printed), such formats will not necessarily make the relevant data available to field managers, who may be unaware of them, or may have neither the time nor inclination to wade through voluminous documents in search of information relevant to their areas of responsibility. Whilst the publication of inventories in the form of reports is highly desirable as a means of ensuring that the data collected is preserved, in order to ensure that the data will be acted upon in practice it is essential to collate and present inventory data in a simple and unified format. Such a unified database should be readily accessible to all those who may require information on significant features - that is, to planners and managers in all relevant government agencies, to field managers such as park rangers and foresters, and to private land managers including landowners and commercial enterprises such as forestry and mineral exploration companies.
At the present state of information technology, the best available means of presenting geoconservation data in a unified and easily accessible format is to use computerised Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in which the data is presented in a mapped form with a linked database. Two GIS-based approaches to unified geoconservation data presentation- which hopefully will ultimately be linked - have been developed in Tasmania, namely the 'Tasmanian Geoconservation Database' and Forestry Tasmania's 'Management Decision Classification' system. These are described below:
The Tasmanian Geoconservation Database (TGD)
Funding provided in 1996 under the State - Commonwealth Governments Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) process enabled the collation of all existing Tasmanian geoconservation inventories into a consolidated database known as the Tasmanian Geoconservation Database (TGD) (Dixon & Duhig 1996). The TGD is a computerised database with some listed sites and areas also mapped into a GIS format. The database is currently administered by the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, and is subject to regular reviews and updating on the advice of an advisory panel comprising Tasmanian geoconservation workers.
It is intended to make the database available to all interested users. The TGD is envisioned as providing the unified repository for all Tasmanian geoconservation inventory data in a readily usable format.
The Management Decision Classification system (MDC)
The primary tool used by Forestry Tasmania in planning forestry operations is the Management Decision Classification (MDC) system. This is a GIS system in which zones within State forest requiring differing management prescriptions are mapped at 1:25,000 scale. Areas containing sensitive conservation values (including geoconservation values) are mapped onto the MDC as either Protection Zones (where no logging is permitted) , Special Management Zones (where logging is permitted with special prescriptions according to the nature of the conservation values present), or Conditional Zones (where logging is deferred pending further investigation of the conservation values).
The value of the MDC system is that it must be consulted in the planning of all forestry activities, so that any values mapped onto the MDC database will come to the attention of forest planners. The existing MDC system has proven useful, and forest planners and managers have been responsive to it. However, a number of areas for improvement can be identified, of which some major areas relevant to geoconservation (Dixon et al. 1997a) include:
Whilst the MDC maps indicate the location of sensitive features they do not provide details of the nature of the features and the appropriate management response; obtaining such information still requires consultation with experts, and cases could arise where the original reason for a feature being mapped onto the MDC is obscure. To alleviate this problem, the MDC GIS maps could be electronically linked to more comprehensive data, and ideally to the Tasmanian Geoconservation Database.
The current MDC covers only State forest, but not private land on which logging may occur. The extension of the MDC, or an equivalent system, to private land is desirable, albeit there may be political difficulties inherent in such an extension.
The MDC does not allow planners to distinguish between areas for which no information on geoconservation values is available, and areas which have been surveyed for geoconservation values and none were found to be present.
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[Legal and Administrative Instruments and Procedures]
[Awareness of Issues]
[Development and Implementation of Management Prescriptions]
[Monitoring and Indicators]
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