NSW Land Cover Theme

Land cover is the visible, biophysical cover on the Earth’s surface including trees, shrubs, grasses, soils, exposed rocks and water bodies, as well as anthropogenic elements such as plantations, crops and built environments. Land cover changes for many reasons, including seasonal weather, severe weather events such as cyclones, floods and fires, and human activities such as mining, agriculture and urbanisation.

Remote sensing data recorded over a period of time allows the observation of land cover dynamics. Classifying these responses provides a robust and repeatable way of characterising land cover types. These complement on ground survey where available.

Datasets included in the Land Cover Theme:

NSW Interim Native Vegetation Extent (2008-v2)
NSW SLATS LANDSAT Woody Change: Derived Vector
Database 1988 – 2010
Plant Community Type Classification
Land Use
Soil Landscapes
Landscapes and Soils
Soil data online

The Land Cover theme is an essential and authoritative source of information that can provide insight into the behaviour of land cover to a wide variety of conditions, both natural and situational.

This provides natural resource managers with the capacity to identify emerging patterns of land cover change and provides a broad spatial and historical context within which to interpret that land cover change.

This can be combined with other information to assess if any pro- active intervention is required to alter change happening to the land cover.

Information about Land Cover dynamics is essential to understanding and addressing a range of national challenges including:

mapping and monitoring land use, natural resources, biodiversity, water usage, drought, pollution, minerals, water quality, wetlands, groundwater dependent ecosystems, land clearing, floodplains, crop acreage and growth, remnant vegetation, land degradation, irrigation, dry land salinity, and vegetation condition
management of forests, rivers, fisheries, catchments and agriculture
national and state inventories of forests, greenhouse gases, endangered species, land cover, topography, and carbon sinks
emergency management of floods, bushfires and landslides.

The NSW Department of Planning and Environment – Environment and Heritage Group is the source of truth for this data theme. The Environment and Heritage Group manages the state-wide vegetation, soils and land use datasets needed to support the Land Cover definitions. The current status of the land cover related datasets are as listed.

Datasets included in the Land Cover Theme:

NSW Native Vegetation Extent
For access to data please use below URL
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/animals-and-plants/biodiversity/nsw-bionet/about-bionet-vegetation-classification/bionet-vegetation-maps/vegetation-extent-and-condition-products#native

Woody Extent and Foliage

For access to data please use below URL

https://datasets.seed.nsw.gov.au/dataset/landsat-woody-extent-and-foliage-projective-cover-fpc-ver-2-1-25m-20087355d

Plant Community Type Classification

For access to data please use below URL
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/animals-and-plants/biodiversity/nsw-bionet/nsw-plant-community-type-classification

Land Use
For access to data please use below URL
https://datasets.seed.nsw.gov.au/dataset/nsw-landuse-2017-v1p2-f0ed

Soil Landscapes Landscapes and Soils Soil data online
For access to data please use below URL
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/land-and-soil/information/espade

alternatively, eSpade can be access through the link below

http://espade.environment.nsw.gov.au/

NSW Soil and Land Information System (SALIS)

For access to data please use the URL

http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/Salis5app/Main/Account/Login

The Electronic Digital Infield Regolith Tool (eDIRT)

For access to data please use the URL

http://edirt.environment.nsw.gov.au/

Custodian agency and contact:

Environment and Heritage Group

Head Office

PO Box A290 Sydney South NSW 1232

Email: info@environment.nsw.gov.au

Metadata Portal Metadata Information

Content Title	NSW Land Cover Theme
Content Type	Document
Description	The Land Cover theme is an essential and authoritative source of information that can provide insight into the behaviour of land cover to a wide variety of conditions, both natural and situational
Initial Publication Date	11/02/2020
Data Currency	18/08/2023
Data Update Frequency	Other
Content Source
File Type	Document
Attribution
Data Theme, Classification or Relationship to other Datasets
Accuracy
Spatial Reference System (dataset)	Other
Spatial Reference System (web service)	Other
WGS84 Equivalent To	Other
Spatial Extent
Content Lineage
Data Classification	Unclassified
Data Access Policy	Open
Data Quality
Terms and Conditions	Creative Commons
Standard and Specification
Data Custodian	NSW Spatial Services
Point of Contact	Please contact us via the Spatial Services Customer Hub
Data Aggregator	Environment and Heritage Group Email: info@environment.nsw.gov.au
Data Distributor
Additional Supporting Information
TRIM Number