Once again Barry and Todd from Greening Australia facilitated the workshop, along with support from Ian from the Pilbara Corridors project. I played the “map nerd in the corner” role, updating the stakeholders on the work we did between the two workshops, creating draft asset maps and adding some more projects and studies to the mapping portal (you can access this map here).

 The Pilbara Corridors Knowledge Map

The second workshop was where the Conservation Action Planning (CAP) process really started to take shape.

The CAP process is also known as Healthy Country Planning. It was initially developed by The Nature Conservancy, and you can read more about it at the CAP web site.  It’s quite an interesting process in itself, and uses the concept of open source to make the process, the tools and the training of practitioners more widely available. With over 1,000 projects using the CAP process globally, it’s one of the more accepted and successful processes in this arena.

In the first part of the workshop, attendees worked through the assets for the Pilbara. To prepare for the workshop, we had put together some simple datasets, including broad categories of the assets, including coastal assets, open plains, rivers and rocky hills and ranges.  This in itself seemed pretty simple but the devil is in the detail – and we knew these were preliminary categories that would likely change.

In trying to define some of these, like the “rocky hills and ranges” one, we started with Beard’s vegetation complexes. Therein lies a problem, as was echoed at the workshop – this data is just not suitable for the Pilbara. The next step was to move to the Land Systems mapping from DAFWA which has some similar issues.  In the end, we had to grab contour maps to delineate the main Pilbara craton and go with some additional Beard’s complexes.  Although it was only an approximation of the wonderful complexity of the Pilbara, it was a starting point from where we could have further discussions in the workshop.

Defining the extent of natural features is always problemmatic – where’s the edge of the Fortescue Marsh?

One of the key benefits of these workshops is to network and learn from the stakeholders.  So, when one of the participants (thanks, Blair!) came up to offer a better way to identify rocky ranges using a ruggedness model, I was more than happy to take this advice and we should be able to map these features more accurately as a result.

During the workshop, our initial four broad categories of assets were expanded out to 13 different categories. Some will be relatively easy to map; others will need to be looked at in a lot more detail.  The CAP process can also work with the concept of nested assets, i.e. that there are a range of more specific assets under these broader categories.

To prepare for these nested assets, we had captured the extents of the specific assets that were identified in workshop one. We had a lot of interpretation to do from previous notes in order to turn “that spot, you know, near that range, where there is that seepage” into a point on a map. Given our time constraints and the fact that this was a first draft, the team captured polygons where possible, then collapsed them to indicative points at the centroids.

We also brought in the Pilbara assets that were identified from the INFFER-based process that Rangelands NRM ran in order to prioritise their investment for their Regional Plan.  During the workshop, these assets were identified in some more detail by the participants (or new ones were identified) and again, there will need to be some spatial ‘sleuthing’ done here to capture the extents of these assets and to gather more spatial information on them.

Indicative assets from the first two workshops

From here the 13 categories, as well as the nested assets, had their condition and threats evaluated in a workshop environment.  Not only was I frantically trying to take notes, but being able to hear about what’s happening on the Pilbara landscapes from the participants also made me think back to the days when I was doing field work in the Pilbara – and how some of the areas nominated sound like they have changed since then!

The upcoming third workshop is where the work done at this second workshop will be digested and the project will then look at the strategic way forward for these assets – determining conservation goals, strategies, key actions and monitoring.  It will be a very interesting conclusion to the workshop series!

For more information on our work with the Pilbara Corridors project, visit the Pilbara Corridors web site, or feel free to drop us a line on email, Facebook, Twitter or leave a comment below.

Piers

The post Pilbara Corridors Update – Workshop Two appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Attendees at the first Pilbara Corridors workshop in Karratha (photo courtesy Rangelands NRM)

Gaia Resources’ role at the workshop is very much about supporting the process in terms of spatial information, although with my background of working in the Pilbara I have had a fair amount of exposure to the area and to some of the amazing landscapes and challenges that it comes with.

For the purposes of the Pilbara Corridors workshops, we began by compiling information about where projects are being done in the Pilbara.  This started with getting ‘brain dumps’ of what’s going on in the Pilbara from a range of people, and then turning that into points and polygons on a map.  This isn’t an easy job in itself, but James, Grit and myself have been seeking out boundaries for projects (such as research trials, surveys, offset programs and other sorts of projects) and documenting them in the Rangelands NRM GRID https://archive.gaiaresources.com.au/products/grid/ instance we have deployed for them.

Using GRID allows the Rangelands NRM team to add additional projects directly through their web browser.  Being web based, GRID allows for anyone with access to be able to contribute data in the standardised format for that “Activity” (a term we use to define a ‘thing that you do’ – like fencing, weed control, etc).

Using GRID to capture assets on the fly

Once these features are saved into GRID, they then become immediately visible in the complementary public web map that is in the Pilbara Corridors web site.  We do this through the WordPress plugin we have developed that complements GRID, and is in use by both Rangelands NRM and the South West Catchment Council in their public facing web sites.  You can see the web map by clicking here or on the image below – have a look around and if you can think of projects we’ve not included, then contact the team at Pilbara Corridors .

The projects map for Pilbara Corridors

Any data in GRID, be it “Activity” or “base layer” data, can be exposed through this method to allow for use in public web sites (of course, you have to be aware of the licencing for your data and not allow data that you shouldn’t make available to appear to the public!).  Together, GRID and the web map provide a pretty powerful combination for public engagement, and it was this combination I used through the Karratha workshop for the Pilbara Corridors project.

Firstly, we had already gathered all the project data into GRID, as both polygon extents, and, because it’s hard to visualise so many polygons effectively, as a series of points created from their centroids.  In addition, we created a heatmap that showed the density of projects in the Pilbara, which is a powerful way of visualising such complex data.

How well studied is the Pilbara?

The first workshop really aimed to capture information about the scope of the project, the types of assets to be considered and the vision for the Pilbara from the participants.  As a result, we have a listing of many different types of “asset” that the Pilbara has, and why these are actually “assets”.  Some of the assets that emerged included concepts like “groundwater”, specific places like the Fortescue Marsh and cultural assets like the Burrup Penninsula and specific waterholes.

During the day I was able to use GRID (with some hiccups caused by the lack of wifi, and switching out to run it through my phone) to demonstrate where the “assets” were that people really wanted to see.  In some cases, I was able to use a satellite imagery layer as a contextual layer for many of the discussions we had, just to illustrate where things are.  During the discussion about the definition of “the Pilbara” I was able to overlay Local Government Areas, the IBRA Bioregion and hydrological catchments to look at how you actually define the Pilbara, an interesting discussion in itself.

Choose your own Pilbara – LGAs (grey), catchments (blue) and IBRA regions (brown)

The first workshop captured a lot of these assets and concepts from the broad range of people involved – the next challenge is to start mapping and preparing this data for use in the second workshop.  I’ll be using GRID again, but since we’ll also be doing some analysis, I’ll supplement this by also using QGIS.  QGIS has, over the last few years, become my go-to GIS package, especially so with the recent 2.8 release (we’re also now running training in it).

As the Director, sometimes I like to get back out and get my hands dirty, so to speak.  So using the tools we have developed (even if just for a day) to help support our clients is certainly a way of doing that.  I’m looking forward to heading back up to the Pilbara in early May to get just a touch of red dirt under my skin again!

Piers

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