Title

Midcoast Council - Likely and Occupied Koala Habitat for Kundle, Khappinghat and Tea Gardens study areas.

Data Quality Statement

Name: Data Quality Statement

Protocol: WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download

Description:

Data quality statement for Midcoast Council - Likely and Occupied Koala Habitat for Kundle, Khappinghat and Tea Gardens study areas.

Function: download

Download Package

Name: Download Package

Protocol: WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download

Description:

Data (Shapefile format) Koala habitat maps for three study areas within Midcoast Local Government Area: Kundle, Khappinghat and Tea Gardens. For each study area there are two classes of map, one is 'Likely Habitat' where known food trees are in abundance and 'Occupied Habitat" that are areas within the 'Likely Habitat' that support persistent koala populations.

Function: download

Koala Conservation Strategy

Name: Koala Conservation Strategy

Protocol: WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download

Description:

MidCoast Koala Conservation Strategy

Function: download

Code

dec4e102-138c-48e9-a314-2ef7d7cc1cc0

Name

ISO 19115

Edition

2016

Type

vector

Code identifying the spatial reference system

4283

Topic category

Title

ANZLIC Search Words

Reference date

2008-05-16

NSW Place Name

Midcoast LGA

Coordinate reference system

Authority code

urn:ogc:def:cs:EPSG::

Code identifying the coordinate reference system

5711

End position

N/A

Contact info

Contact position

Data Broker

Organisation name

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Telephone number

131555

Email address

data.broker@environment.nsw.gov.au

Web address

https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/dcceew

Responsible party role

pointOfContact

Lineage

The first step in deriving the mapping data was to determine study areas and they were identified by Midcoast council for this project. These areas are referred to as Kundle, Khappinghat and Tea Gardens and each are approximately 16, 000 hectares and square or rectangular in shape. ‘Likley koala habitat’ was derived using plant community type (PCT) data to assess the mix and percentage of koala trees within each PCT to determine if the habitat is suitable. Where the PCT has a greater than 15% dominance of koala trees then the PCT is tagged as ‘Likely habitat’. PCT modelling was used to delineate these areas and required fine scale refinement to correct for misclassification and to match current extant vegetation boundaries. The resulting ‘Likely Habitat’ maps for the three study areas contain 45 PCT’s. To determine koala occupancy (‘Occupied koala habitat’) an analysis of all koala records across the study area was undertaken to determine past and present occurrence of a koala populations. Initially, a gap analysis of koala records was required to identify areas that required survey. As a result of the gap analysis, site surveys for koala presence were undertaken at 66 pre-selected sites and an additional 60 opportunistic sites across the 3 priority study sites. Site surveys commenced in early April 2023 and finished in mid-December 2023. The data from additional survey sites were undertaken post mid December 2023. Including existing records, there were a total of 3,358 koala records in the three study areas that were available for use in the occupancy analysis. The occupancy method requires the records to be attributed with generational time frames and that was done for 6 year generations i.e., generation 1 (0-6 years ago), generation 2 (6-12 years ago) and generation 3 (12-18 years ago) . All the koala records across the last 3 generations were assessed within 2.5km grid cells across the study areas to determine areas that demonstrated historical and present occupancy. Grid squares are tagged as ’occupied’ where the following combinations of generations were present: • generation 1 and generation 2 • generation 1 and generation 3 • generation 2 and generation 3 • generations 1,2 and 3 By combining the ‘Likely koala habitat’ map and the koala occupancy data, an ‘Occupied koala habitat’ map is derived by extracting all the ‘Likely Koala habitat’ polygons from the grid squares that qualified as having generational persistence.

Limitations on public access

Contact position

Data Broker

Organisation name

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Telephone number

131555

Email address

data.broker@environment.nsw.gov.au

Web address

https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/dcceew

Responsible party role

pointOfContact

Contact position

Data Broker

Organisation name

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Telephone number

131555

Email address

data.broker@environment.nsw.gov.au

Web address

https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/dcceew

Responsible party role

pointOfContact