Dr. Suzanne Prober, Prof Richard Hobbs, Prof Hugh Possingham and I have recently had a paper entitled ‘Lines in the sand: quantifying the cumulative development footprint in the world’s largest remaining temperate woodland‘ published in the journal Landscape Ecology. You can view the article online here or contact me to send you a pdf and/or any appendices.

In the paper, we quantify cumulative anthropogenic development footprints for the Great Western Woodland and expose the large proportion of this that is made up of unmapped linear infrastructure. We highlight the crucial importance of explicitly accounting for the ecological impacts of linear infrastructure in impact evaluations – impacts that typically pass under the radar of impact evaluations.

We also present an analysis of key drivers of development footprint extent, both at the regional and landscape-patch levels, and provide key insights, such as the mitigative effect of pastoralism on development footprints in mining landscapes, and investigate the implications for edge effects. Our approach and methodology provide information and insights that are useful for cumulative and strategic impact assessment as well as landscape planning and conservation, and can be applied to other relatively intact landscapes worldwide.

Fig. 3 Contribution of different anthropogenic disturbance types to total direct development footprint, with some examples. a) Contribution of different types of infrastructure to total footprint. b) An example of ‘hub’ infrastructure: an abandoned gold mine. c) Aerial view showing both hub and linear infrastructure of a mine and associated exploration grids. d) Aerial view of exploration grids passing through shrubland and woodland vegetation, the white dots are drill pads. e) A mapped track leading to Helena-Aurora Range, one of the banded ironstone formations where mining is currently proposed. The track was probably initially built for mineral exploration purposes and is now used by miners, conservation agencies, and tourists. f) A ground-truthed unmapped track with abandoned exploration drilling sample bags to the left. An abandoned hydrocarbon drum was found further along this track.