Lab 10 Oceania


Lab 10, Oceania


Our final module for the semester was on Oceania, which includes Australia, the realms of the Pacific Islands, Polar regions of the Arctic and Antarctic.  This is the only world region not connected by land to another region. The region of Oceania is connected more by its isolation than by a shared physiography or human experience.  The region is dominated by Australia, not only by its size but also its economics and population.  Australia and New Zealand are culturally similar; however, their physical landscapes are quite different.  Australia's outback consists of extensive grassland that supports one of the world's largest sheep and cattle industries.  It is also home to the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef, that stretches over 1400 miles.  Australia is geographically stable, while New Zealand is on the boundary of the Australia and Pacific plates and is prone to both earthquakes and volcanoes.  The Pacific islands to the north and east of Australia are divided into three regions: Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia.   A number of these islands form atolls, or ring-shaped chains of coral islands surrounding a central lagoon.  When Pangea began to break apart 175 million years ago, egg laying mammals were beginning to evolve.  When Australia broke off the super continent, these egg laying mammals were isolated and not pushed out by more advanced mammals.  Australia also has more deadly snakes that any other county in the world. 

 

 Lab 10 we were able to search for our own layers and prepare us for our final project.  I chose to look at the massive brush fires the affected Australia 5 years ago and the effect it had on the Koala population.  The two layers I added were Koala Habitat around Brisbane which had the following metadata: the author is s4637936_UQmaps, the date is September 18, 2024, This dataset shows Phascolarctos cinereus (koala) Habitat Suitability Model delineating core habitat for the species across remnants and regrowth vegetation within the South East Queensland (SEQ) regional planning boundary area (also referred as ShapingSEQ). Koala habitat areas are matter of state environmental significance (MSES) for the purposes of the State Planning Policy 2017 (SPP).  The other layer is Wildfire Severity (2019-2020) and the metadata included: Wildfire Severity (2019-2020), The author is DCCEEW_Geospatial, the date is July 31, 2024, the purpose is to quantify the potential impacts of the 2019/2020 brushfires on wildlife, plants, and ecological communities, and identify appropriate response and recovery actions.  The attribute for layer Koala Habitat included: Percent of population return following brushfires, Confidence populations are returning to preferred habitat (high, med, low).  The other layer did not contain an attribute table.  The modifications I made included: I added the Imagery Hybrid Basemap to my project.  It allows for a visualization of terrain, infrastructure, and urban/suburban areas affected by the fires.  Wildfire Severity layer did not allow for labels (probably since there is no attribute table.)  For the Koala Habitat layer I added the percentage labels for koalas the percentage of the koala population that was lost to the fire.  I adjusted the size of the labels, so they are still legible but not overwhelming.  The importance and reason I created the map was: I wanted to be able to show how the massive wildfires of 2019 and 2020 effected the koala population around Brisbane Australia. The data layer for the koala habitat features the population changes due to the fires, but it would not have made much sense without visualizing where those fires were and how sever they had been.  The Wildfire Severity layer shows the amount of vegetation destroyed during the fires with darker colors representing the most vegetation lost.  These two lay correlate that the koala population was most effected in areas that lost more vegetation.



 

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