Account-ready data: ecosystem condition in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. A data collection from the Regional Ecosystem Accounting Pilot projects

This collection comprises ecosystem condition account-ready data for the Western Australia Wheatbelt, which is one of two case studies of the Ecosystem Accounting Pilots for Agricultural and Mixed-Use Landscapes project, delivering ecosystem accounts at sub-national scales. Dataset values (index) vary continuously from a theoretical minimum of 0.0 (ecosystem integrity extinguished) to a maximum of 1.0 (ecosystem integrity in reference condition). The index represents the contribution that a given site (grid cell) makes to the effective area of ecosystem integrity remaining within any given spatial reporting unit, expressed as a proportion of the contribution made by a site in reference condition. Ecosystem condition data are provided for 18 annual epochs (between 2001 and 2018) derived by combining data developed through applications of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) remote sensing-based Habitat Condition Assessment System (HCAS) and the expert opinion-based Australian Ecosystem Models (AusEcoModels) Framework. The HCAS application version 2.3 (v2.3) is a modification of the original HCAS version 2.1 and further incorporates landscape context effects through inferred local pressures, resulting in the ecosystem site condition subindex. The AusEcoModels application uses expert elicitation to derive conceptual models of ecosystem reference and modified condition states and associated condition scores. Rule sets relate these condition states to remote sensing variables representing ecosystem characteristics to map the ecosystem state condition subindex. These subindex datasets are included in this collection.

The supplementary metadata report summarises how the ecosystem condition index was derived, and describes the datasets in this collection. Supplementary data are provided in this collection to support interpretation and use. These include the overall HCAS v2.3 best estimate of ecosystem condition for the 2001 to 2018 long-term remote sensing epoch and associated subindex datasets; the significant trend in ecosystem condition from the 18 annual epochs; an analysis of how ‘nearby’ and relevant the 20 reference sites used as benchmarks were to the estimate of HCAS habitat condition for each site of interest; and a spatial mask for use when aggregating ecosystem condition data into accounts and tables for reporting to exclude areas identified as potentially erroneous.

All raster data in this collection are provided as 100 m spatially-registered GeoTiff files, mostly in floating point format (Spatial extent in GDA2020, Australian Albers, EPSG:9473: xmin: -1532000, xmax: -1060000, ymin: -3858000, ymax: -3319000). These were used as a basis for developing a set of ecosystem condition stock accounts and supplementary data tables for the Western Australia Wheatbelt (see companion data collection - Experimental ecosystem accounts and supplementary data for the Western Australia Wheatbelt, accessed at https://data.csiro.au/collection/csiro:57811).