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The National Land & Water Resources Audit (the Audit) assisted in identifying natural resource management priorities, and allowing the progress of natural resource management (NRM) investments to be assessed through the development and maintenance of accurate, cost-effective, accessible and timely data and information on the nation’s natural resources. To help assess:

• health of land, water, vegetation and biological resources
• performance of government programs, strategies and policies

The Natural Heritage Ministerial Board tasked the National Land & Water Resources Audit with coordinating the collation of data to support reporting on natural resource condition required under the national NRM monitoring and evaluation framework (National M&E Framework).

The National M&E Framework identified three requirements for monitoring natural resource condition:

• a set of resource condition indicators to measure progress toward the agreed national outcomes on a medium and long term basis
• a set of indicators for monitoring community and social processes relevant to or affected by NRM programs, as well as measures of the adoption of sustainable development and production techniques
• contextual data pertinent to the indicator being considered

The indicators reported on under the National M&E Framework are:

1. Resource condition (biophysical topics or matters for target):

• land salinity
• soil condition
• native vegetation communities’ integrity
• inland aquatic ecosystems integrity (rivers and other wetlands)
• estuarine, coastal and marine habitat integrity
• nutrients in aquatic environments
• surface water salinity in freshwater aquatic environments
• turbidity/suspended particulate matter in aquatic environments
• significant native species and ecological communities
• ecologically significant invasive species

2. Social and economic indicators:

• land managers’ capacity to change and adopt sustainable management practices
• capacity of regional organisations and social and institutional foundations of NRM
• community vitality, viability and health

3. Contextual data:

• land use

4. Integrated themes:

• biodiversity
• intensive land use zone
• rangelands
• Signposts for Australian Agriculture