The development of a national biodiversity monitoring program requires a number of major principles to be considered. Firstly, the clearly stated objectives of monitoring need to be established. Secondly, appropriate spatial and temporal scales for assessing indicators need to be identified and thirdly objective, repeatable and quantitative methods need to selected to enable meaningful monitoring to take place. All these need to be set up within an adaptive framework.

The TERN Rangelands Programme (Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network) required the development of such a stratification around which a monitoring methodology for rangeland flora could be built. The stratification of differences in biophysical features of the landscape at a continental scale is required to consider the response of biodiversity to management actions or threatening processes such as climate change. The IBRA (Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation of Australia) forms the fundamental basis for such a stratification. Obtaining measures of bare ground, substrate type and percent cover by life form and their linkage to remote sensing are presented and discussed.

This paper outlines the TERN Rangelands objectives, national stratification and methodology to sample vegetation across a range of rangeland vegetation communities, its integration with remote sensing techniques and issues of adequate representative sampling in very patchy or patterned vegetation types.