Queensland
We define ground cover as the vegetation (living and dead), biological crusts and stone that are in contact with the soil surface. Ground cover is a key component of many soil processes, including infiltration, run-off and surface erosion.
Low ground cover can lead to soil erosion, which contributes to:
- increased sediment loads reaching waterways
- loss of productivity for grazing enterprises.
Appropriate and sustainable land management practices, particularly the careful management of grazing pressure, can help to:
- maintain or improve ground cover
- reduce erosion
- improve the stability and resilience of the landscape.
In 2023, the mean ground cover across the grazing lands of Queensland was 65%, which is:
- slightly above the long-term (1987–2023) mean of 64%
- a slight decline from the 2022 mean ground cover of 67%, the highest mean late dry season ground cover reported for the state since the high rainfall period of 2010-2012.
Fire events affected most regions of the state in the late dry season of 2023, likely contributing to the slight decline despite the above-average annual rainfall. In 2023, approximately 84% of Queensland was classified as grazing land, according to Queensland Land Use Mapping Program data.
The Queensland Ground Cover Monitoring Program
Ground cover levels are predicted by applying an algorithm to satellite imagery, calibrated and validated by field measurements.
Ground cover levels are reported for Queensland’s 12 natural resource management regions, with the data showing change in mean ground cover levels over 37 years. At the scale of reporting, the changes can be broadly attributed to patterns of regional climatic variability.
Averaging the ground cover levels across whole regions can mask localised areas of lower cover or high variability in high cover, which may result from land management impacts, soil fertility and localised climatic effects or other impacts (e.g. fire).
You can access further information about local ground cover changes via several online visualisation and reporting tools and open data portals at the links below.
Groundcover estimates presented in this report are based on combined Landsat and Sentinel-2 fractional cover and persistent green cover data that was available at the time. Due to this, results in this report may differ from more recent groundcover data reporting that may be based on revised versions of these data sets.
