IBRA
The Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia (IBRA) divides the Australian continent into 85 bioregions. 404 sub-regions have now also been defined Australia-wide based on major geomorphic features in each bioregion.
The bioregions and sub-regions are the reporting unit for assessing the status of native ecosystems, their protection in the national reserve system and for use in the monitoring and evaluation framework in the Australian Government's current Natural Resource Management initiatives. The IBRA sub-regions (where available) have previously been used as the unit of analysis for continent-wide assessments of landscape health and biodiversity by the National Land and Water Resources Audit.
IBRA is a co-operative approach by all nature conservation agencies and continues to be refined as more detailed information on ecosystems or other base layers comes to hand. Parks Australia coordinates the update process, working closely with the jurisdictions to develop revised boundaries where deemed necessary.
The National Reserve System for Australia is being developed through the use of IBRA as its planning framework. In 1997, a priority IBRA regions map was developed to assist organisations concerned with conservation planning and management issues. This was revised in 2001 and the IBRA 5.1 regions were allocated a priority ranking of Very High, High, Medium or Low. These priority rankings relate to the potential value land reservation in those regions would add to the development of a comprehensive, adequate and representative Reserve System for Australia.
Many National Land and Water Resources Audit (NLWRA ) projects are using the IBRA regions for analyses, assessment and reporting purposes. Australia's Rangelands Assessment Project has developed excellent descriptions of the IBRA version 5.1 bioregions.