Review of Australian land use mapping and land management practice

Land use information plays a vital role in effective management of natural resources in any country. The land use and land cover mapping is always a dynamic issue in every country because of the changing nature of the land use. Australia is experiencing similar traits. Knowledge of land use change patterns has important implications for sustainable development and sustainable environmental management. It helps in the management of water, soil, nutrients, plants and animals and provides relationship between land use dynamics and economics and social condition in urban and regional area. Although Australia has a long history of land use mapping and land management practice, no systematic study of the land use mapping status and land management practice can be confirmed. With the establishment of the Commonwealth Advisory Committee on the Environment in June 1972, later known as the Australian Advisory Committee on the Environment, the Australian government gave prime importance to land use and the environment. The committee recommended to the government that “Land use is fundamental to any consideration of the environment.” The committee also found an urgent need for an efficient, co-ordinated, and comprehensive system of national and state land use planning. Subsequently, many organizations and institutions like BRS, ACLUMP, CSIRO, QDERM, and DPI started on land cover/land use mapping from national to catchment level and many Land Care groups began working on land management the local level. This study reviews the status of the land use mapping and land management practices as implemented in Australi

Ranking workplace competencies: Student and graduate perceptions

Students and graduates from a variety of business studies programs at a New Zealand tertiary institution completed a questionnaire in which they ranked the relative importance of a list of 24 competencies for graduates entering the workforce using a 7-point Likert scale. These competencies were identified from literature reports of the characteristics of superior performers in the workplace. The results show a close similarity between students and graduates’ ranking of competencies with computer literacy, customer service orientation, teamwork and co-operation, self-confidence, and willingness to learn ranked most important. There was little difference between the two groups in their rankings of cognitive or ‘hard’ skills and behavioral or ‘soft’ skills. However, the graduates placed greater importance on most of the competencies, resulting in a statistically significant difference between the graduates and students’ ranking of both hard and soft skills. The findings from this study suggest that cooperative education programs may help develop business students’ awareness of the importance of graduate competencies in the workplace