This repository contains interactive habitat suitability maps for the mallee bird community of south-eastern Australia. The maps link expert-elicited State-and-Transition Models of mallee vegetation condition to species- and community-level habitat suitability scores.
The maps were developed as decision-support outputs for visualising how different vegetation condition states may support threatened and declining mallee bird species. They are intended to support conservation planning, ecological restoration, and assessment of habitat condition across mapped mallee landscapes.
The live interactive website is available via GitHub Pages.
The map series includes interactive web maps for individual species groups and community-level outputs. Habitat suitability is shown on a 1–7 Likert scale, where 1 indicates that a species is not expected to occur and 7 indicates the best available habitat expected.
The maps are organised into the following groups:
The community-level maps summarise broader patterns in habitat suitability across the mallee bird community, based on the expert-derived species-level suitability scores.
The habitat suitability maps were derived by linking expert-elicited mallee bird habitat suitability scores to spatially mapped vegetation condition states.
Experts assessed the suitability of different State-and-Transition Model condition states for mallee bird species across three broad mallee vegetation archetypes:
For each vegetation archetype, experts scored the expected habitat suitability of each condition state for threatened and declining mallee bird species. These scores were then linked to mapped State-and-Transition Model condition-state rasters to generate spatial predictions of habitat suitability.
The resulting maps show predicted suitability for individual species and species groups across Triodia/shrubby mallee vegetation, as well as community-level outputs derived from the underlying species-level predictions.
The State-and-Transition Models represent alternative vegetation condition states and degradation or recovery pathways in mallee ecosystems. Condition states describe changes in overstorey and understorey condition, including reference states, modified states, highly modified states, and collapsed or transformed states.
The suitability maps therefore do not simply show vegetation type. They show how mapped vegetation condition states are expected to influence habitat suitability for different mallee bird species, based on expert ecological knowledge.
The map series focuses on the nationally threatened mallee bird community.
Individual species maps show predicted habitat suitability for each species across the mapped landscape. Group-level maps are provided to make the outputs easier to explore for species with broadly similar habitat associations.
Community-level maps summarise spatial patterns in suitability across the broader mallee bird community. These outputs can be used to identify areas where vegetation condition is predicted to support higher overall habitat suitability, as well as areas where management or restoration may improve habitat value.
Open the GitHub Pages website associated with this repository to view the interactive habitat suitability maps.
The maps can be used to explore broad spatial patterns in predicted habitat suitability across the study landscape. Use the map layer controls to switch between species, species groups, community-level outputs, and basemap layers.
These maps are intended as regional decision-support layers. They should be interpreted alongside local ecological knowledge, field validation, survey data, classification uncertainty, and the assumptions of the underlying State-and-Transition Models and expert-elicitation process.
This habitat suitability map series is related to other Living Landscape and mallee condition-mapping products, including:
Together, these products provide a spatial framework for linking vegetation condition, expert ecological knowledge, and expected biodiversity outcomes for the mallee bird community.
Maisey, A. C. & Radford, J. Q. 2026. Safeguarding mallee birds — habitat suitability maps. Interactive web map series. GitHub repository.
Update this citation with a DOI if a versioned release is archived through Zenodo.
Unless otherwise stated, written content and map outputs in this repository are provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.
Satellite basemap imagery, including Esri imagery, and any third-party spatial data remain subject to their original licences and terms of use and are not included under this repository licence.
This project was supported by funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program through the Resilient Landscapes Hub.
We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to land, sea and community, and pay our respects to Elders past and present.