Land ownership is an important factor in the implementation of revegetation programmes to manage dryland salinity. Because revegetation tasks involve costs that are usually supported (partially or fully) by the land owners, it is necessary to characterise the land ownership patterns of the targeted area to aid revegetation planning and impact analysis. To gain insights to the land ownership characteristics of an area earmarked for revegetation of salt-affected areas, and to develop appropriate analytical techniques, a case study of the Spring Creek sub-catchment (10,522 ha) in Queensland, Australia, was conducted. Using a geographic information systems (GIS) based approach, thematic maps of revegetation priority areas, salinity areas, land parcel, and land ownership data were processed and analysed using raster overlay operation, attribute query, and descriptive statistics. Results show that 83% of the area needing revegetation is owned by only 28 of the total 110 owners in the catchment. There are 11 salt-affected owners of the 301 hectare area affected by salinity. However, those with salinity problems on their property own only 14% of the total revegetation area. This could pose some serious problems in convincing land owners to revegetate on their properties to combat salinity problems occurring on land owned by others. The methodology presented in this paper provides a structured and systematic approach to characterising land ownership and its possible implications for revegetation planning. It could generate information indicating the number of land owners (along with the proportion of land areas involved) that will most likely participate, or otherwise, in revegetation efforts
