Assessing the representativeness of the wet tropics of Queensland world heritage property

Abstract An assessment is made of the representativeness of the Wet Tropics World Heritage property of north-east Queensland, Australia. The relevance of this feature to the World Heritage criteria is discussed. Computer-based spatial data sets are used to provide a sample of the distribution of key environmental factors at both continental and regional scales. Numerical classification techniques are applied to generate environmental groups from pattens in the distribution of these environmental factors. An evaluation is presented of the representation of these groups within the World Heritage property, in the context of present and potential tropical forest cover.