PROSPECTS FOR REGIONAL SUSTAINABILITY: LAND USE CHANGE IN THE EASTERN DARLING DOWNS, 1975-2001 Charlie Zammit*, Armando A. Apan, Geoff Cockfield, Andrew Le Brocque, and Michelle R. Bouldin Land Use Study Centre University of Southern Queensland Toowoomba 4350 Queensland, Australia *Phone: +61 4631 5577 Fax: +61 4631 5581 Email: zammit@usq.edu.au Abstract The Darling Downs region of southern Queensland is in the headwaters of the Murray Darling Basin and is characterised by highly fertile soils and a long history of agricultural development. In recent times the Downs, like many agricultural regions, has experienced significant change in land use activities, caused partly by new policy initiatives and technological developments, partly by changing commodity markets and partly by broader demographic and cultural shifts. This paper reports preliminary findings from a multidisciplinary research project being conducted in the Downs that examines patterns of land use change and their causes in a 1000km2 area centred around the town of Pittsworth and including upland country to the east and floodplains bordering the Condamine river to the west. The research aims to test the proposition that much can be learnt about future sustainable land use options from a rigorous spatial analysis of patterns of land use change over time, combined with an assessment of socio-economic and policy drivers that may have contributed to observed patterns. The project has assembled a spatial data base of land uses (derived from the digital classification of Landsat MSS, TM and ETM+ imagery) from 1975 to 2001 in 5 yearly intervals. It has collated annual socio-economic and agricultural commodity statistics for the area from 1950, has compiled a preliminary inventory of potential policy and technological drivers of change and has commenced an ecological assessment of remnant vegetation. We are now examining visual and statistical methods for integrating the spatial assessment of land use with socio-economic and policy drivers and current ecological condition. Our intention is to be able to identify, with some rigour from the assembled historical evidence, what the relative contributions of identified drivers of land use change have been over the study period. This form of integrated analysis has the potential to provide clear advice to government on policy and planning options for encouraging a transition to more sustainable land use activities in the region. Here we report on patterns of change from 1975 to 2001 for 5 key land use classes (native vegetation, pasture/grasslands, water, agricultural crops, urban/cultural features) identified from spectral analysis, ancillary data and ground-truthing. Analysis of 1975 and 2001 imagery has revealed that over 53,000 hectares (ha) of vegetation in the study area has changed from one land use class to another during the 26-year period. Of the 25,791 ha of native vegetation cleared in the area, some 15,667 ha were cleared for pasture while 9,673 ha were cleared for cropping. In general, there has been a shift from cropping to pasture over the period. Cropping areas increased from 86,565 ha in 1975 to 94,419 ha in 2001 while pasture ISBN 0-9581366-0-2 84 11th ARSPC