1.3.2.2 Gaps

The Cooper subregion asset workshop in Brisbane in October 2014 confirmed three significant data gaps that had been identified previously during collation of the asset list.

The first data gap consists of species listed as threatened under SA’s National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972, including their threat status in the South Australian Outback region as assessed by Gillam and Urban (2013). Insufficient available spatial data meant that the habitats of these species could not be adequately geographically circumscribed as assets able to be nominated to the asset list. Thus, it was not possible to determine the level of potential water dependence of these species during compilation of the water-dependent asset register. Future assessments will be able to include the habitats of these species should suitable spatial data become available.

Two additional sets of potential assets were proposed at the workshop in Brisbane in October 2014, but they were considered of lower priority than other datasets already nominated by Queensland state agencies and thus these two datasets were not pursued to formal nomination for assets.

These sets of potential assets are from the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, which holds the database for Aquatic Conservation Assessments (ACA) and for the Aquatic Biodiversity Assessment Mapping Method (AquaBAMM) (DEHP, 2015).

ACAs are non-social and non-economic assessments that are designed with the sole intent of identifying conservation values of wetlands at any user-defined scale. The ACA database contains a set of ‘special features’ that are places of hydrological, ecological and/or sociocultural locations that are not necessarily identified as wetlands or conservation places by other means. These features are a potential set of assets that are qualitatively different to any existing asset dataset contributed to the Cooper asset list during the current assessment of water dependence.

AquaBAMM identifies relative wetland conservation values within a specified area – usually a catchment – using criteria, indicators and measures that are based on a large body of literature. The AquaBAMM process identified species of local significance which could be potential assets. Such species are not necessarily on national or state lists of threatened species, but are threatened in a specific catchment.

No other ecological assets were nominated following the Cooper subregion asset workshops in Charleville and Quilpie in February 2015.