Project lead: Southern Rangelands Pastoral Alliance (SRPA)
Project overview
This project aimed to automate natural capital assessment in the Southern Rangelands by developing integrated digital technologies to objectively measure biodiversity, weather, and soil attributes, reducing the reliance on human observation.
It involved digitising historical records, utilising public data repositories and deploying readily available devices for on-ground measurements at four pilot sites.
These sites hosted weather stations, soil probes, and monitoring cameras, which enabled the testing of machine learning tools for object identification.
This project supports the emerging Natural Capital market in the region, where remote and challenging landscapes necessitate urgent monitoring and management.
This project lays the foundation for ongoing data collection, allowing for benchmarking, monitoring improvements, and contributing valuable insights for natural capital accounting in the Southern Rangelands. It also serves as a pilot, offering lessons for other pastoralists in remote Western Australia seeking to implement similar monitoring programs.
Impacts and Results
This project showcases the potential of automated technology for efficient and objective monitoring in the Southern Rangelands, addressing the traditionally time-consuming and subjective nature of the task.
It also highlighted current technology limitations based on connectivity requirements, which are expected to improve with ongoing connectivity advancements in remote areas.
The project’s success has led to further initiatives and funding applications to develop a mobile satellite monitoring unit, leveraging the learnings from the past 18 months.
Additionally, flora and fauna data collected during this project will be shared with citizen science platforms, enhancing regional knowledge and supporting environmental research.
This project was funded by the Australian Government’s Agricultural Innovation Hubs Program and was initiated through the South-West WA Drought Resilience Adoption and Innovation Hub.
Cover photo: Cattle at Challa Station, Debbie Dowden
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