Natural Resource Management (NRM) Regions (2016)

The Natural Resource Management (NRM) Regions dataset is maintained for the purpose of authoritative reporting on the Australian Government's NRM investments. The dataset is designed to cover all Australian territory where Australian Government funded NRM projects might take place and includes major islands, external territories, and state and coastal waters in addition to the NRM regional boundaries. 

The 2016 version 2 updates the marine portion of the NRM regions to be consistent with the current (2015) Australian Maritime Boundaries Information System (AMBIS) coastal water limit boundary. It also includes a new unique ID field for sorting purposes (this is explained in detail below). Three NRM names have also been updated as a result of new information from relevant state/territory agencies and/or NRM regional bodies, as follows: 

1. “Avon” changed to “Wheatbelt”
2. “North West” changed to “Cradle Coast”

The 2016 version 2 maintains definitions established in the 2015 version, including for the Peel-Harvey NRM region and for the OceanWatch Australia Limited NRM organisation (not spatially defined). It also maintains changes made in earlier versions including: the 2014 changes in NSW from Catchment Management Authorities (CMA) to Local Land Service areas; and the 2012 update/formalisation of the 2010 dataset (which was an interim update of the NRM Regions 2009 dataset, released Feb 2009). The original base layer version of this dataset was released in 2006 as the Natural Heritage Trust II (NHT2) Region Boundaries dataset. 

Whilst the boundaries of NRM Regions are defined by legislation in some states and territories this dataset should not be used to represent legal boundaries in any way. It is an administrative dataset developed for the purpose of reporting and public information. It should be noted that from time to time the states and/or territories may revise their regional boundaries in accordance with local needs and therefore alterations to either the attribution or boundaries of the data may occur in the future.

In total, this dataset now represents 61 NRM regions, two of which have large and remote islands which are distinguished in the spatial data, resulting in 63 map objects. The 61 NRM regions comprise 56 mainland regions administered by 55 NRM regional bodies (the Cooperative Management Area in QLD is jointly administered by the two adjacent regional bodies: the Cape York and Northern Gulf NRM bodies) and seven islands (five administered by the Australian Government as external territories, and two administered by nearby mainland NRM regional bodies, which are shown as separate map objects).

The 2016 version 2 includes a new unique ID field in the table structure to allow for sorting based on state, region name and region object (where there is more than one part). The following list of regions includes the new NRM_ID field as a reference:

New South Wales	
1010	Central Tablelands
1020	Central West
1030	Greater Sydney
1040	Hunter
1050	Murray
1060	North Coast (excluding Lord Howe Island)
1061	North Coast - Lord Howe Island
1070	North West NSW
1080	Northern Tablelands
1090	Riverina
1100	South East NSW
1110	Western

Victoria	
2010	Corangamite
2020	East Gippsland
2030	Glenelg Hopkins
2040	Goulburn Broken
2050	Mallee
2060	North Central
2070	North East
2080	Port Phillip and Western Port
2090	West Gippsland 
2100	Wimmera

Queensland	
3010	Burnett Mary
3020	Cape York
3030	Condamine
3040	Cooperative Management Area (administered jointly by Cape York and Northern Gulf)
3050	Desert Channels
3060	Fitzroy 
3070	Burdekin
3080	Northern Gulf
3090	Border Rivers Maranoa-Balonne
3100	Mackay Whitsunday
3110	South East Queensland
3120	South West Queensland
3130	Southern Gulf
3140	Wet Tropics
3150	Torres Strait

South Australia	
4010	Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges
4020	Alinytjara Wilurara
4030	Eyre Peninsula
4040	Kangaroo Island
4050	Northern and Yorke
4060	South Australian Arid Lands
4070	South Australian Murray Darling Basin
4080	South East

Western Australia	
5010	Northern Agricultural
5020	Peel-Harvey
5030	Perth
5040	Rangelands
5050	South Coast
5060	South West
5070	Wheatbelt

Tasmania	
6010	Cradle Coast
6020	North
6030	South (excluding Macquarie Islands)
6031	South - Macquarie Islands

Northern Territory	
7010	Northern Territory

Australian Capital Territory	
8010	ACT

External Territories 	
9010	Ashmore and Cartier Islands
9020	Christmas Island
9030	Cocos Keeling Islands
9040	Heard and McDonald Islands
9050	Norfolk IslandData to be available in the Public Domain under Creative Commons by Attribution Licensing Agreement. 
More information can be found here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/deed.en
CC - Attribution (CC BY)
© Commonwealth of Australia (Department of the Environment) 2015

Tags: BOUNDARIES Administrative_Conservation, BOUNDARIES Administrative_Management, Offline Data
Organization: Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water