The Future for Land Use Mapping: National E-Infrastructure, Modelling Analytics, Synthesis and Securing Institutional Capacity

Land use and land use change are central to our understanding of human impacts on the environment (e.g. Foley et al., 2005); they underpin policy and programs to support productivity improvements, protection and use of our natural resources and land development (Clancy & Lesslie, 2013). Increased demands for information and improved technology provide both a driver of change to existing approaches and an opportunity to improve our ability to characterise, track and model future trends in land use (Bryan, 2013). In this chapter, we explore some of these opportunities, focusing on current advances in e-infrastructure and examples of their application. A goal of this paper is to look at ways to address one of Rob Lesslie’s key concerns: the ad hocnature of both the funding and delivery of crucial national and regional land use products. Some of these recent technologies, both within and outside the land use mapping context, are presented to map a vision for the future, including the establishment of a centre for land use and land resources.