Tares among the wheat - green thorny weed growing between yellow ripe wheat stalks in a field ready for harvest, illustration of Biblical parable of Jesus

Weeds

This dependency category covers direct and indirect reliance on an absence or relative infrequency of weeds.

Metric:

Proportion of land/freshwater/ocean depended on by the reporting entity unaffected by introduced/invasive/weed species, varieties or strains

Units

Percentage (%)

Example target

Benchmark against best practice

Example methods / guidance / references

What are tiers?

Tier 1

Estimate using own judgement and observations

Tier 2

Estimate using third-party professional estimates or public data

Tier 3

Model or measure based on site-specific surveys/sampling, remote or in-field sensing, laboratory analysis, etc.

Example data sources

Internal records

Third-party data sources

Maps showing records of occurrences of invasive species across Australia are available at the Atlas of Living Australia.

Maps showing the presence of weed species close to a selected location in Queensland are available at Weeds near me.

Site-specific measurements or model outputs

Data on global and Australian modelled current and future (2070) distributions for around 100 invasive plant species are available at CSIRO Data Access Portal – All CLIMEX models – AdaptNRM module 2: Invasive plant species and climate change.

Data on invasive alien species (including certain weeds) pressures on biodiversity in New South Wales are available at CSIRO Data Access Portal – Assessing invasive alien species pressures on biodiversity in New South Wales (exposure dimension): Data packages for the Biodiversity Indicator Program, first assessment.

Notes

‘Unaffected by’ could be defined more specifically as the flow of ecosystem services depended on by the reporting entity are not significantly reduced (remain above levels required to meet objectives), and/or management of this issue does not entail significant cost (above expectations). Extensive information on weed species of relevance to Victoria is available at Victorian Resources Online – Invasive Plants.