Identifying management-driven dynamics in vegetation cover: Applying the Compere framework to Cooper Creek, Australia

Abstract

The observed spatial and temporal dynamics in landscape and ecosystem resources are the net effects of natural processes and management activities. Monitoring the impact that humans have on these resources requires that these two sources of variability be partitioned, removing the natural variability to reveal variability due to management activities. Here, we present Compere, a relative benchmarking framework for monitoring the management-driven impacts on ecosystem resources. The framework identifies locations in a region that share similar biophysical properties to a target location. Taking an attribute of interest, it then compares the value of the target location with those of all its biophysically equivalent locations, with any differences being attributed to variations in management. We provide an example application of Compere, using satellite-derived vegetation cover data to examine the impact of hydrocarbon extraction activities on land condition (as described by vegetation cover) across the 490,000-km2 Cooper Creek region in arid central Australia. Validation was performed by comparing land condition estimates to known disturbance patterns across the region. We found that the establishment of well sites was associated with between 12% and 41% decreases in land condition but that condition recovered to original levels by 6 years after establishment. We also found that fires had much larger and longer lasting effects on land condition across these landscapes, indicating that mining-related activities that change fire patterns are likely to affect land condition most. Compere is a generic, flexible framework, providing a new capability for monitoring management impacts on multiple types of ecosystem resources.