This Land and Soil Capability (LSC) dataset uses the best available soils natural resource mapping across New South Wales. It provides a broad-scale, regional view as to the dominant LSC class present for over 3000 individual mapping units through the assessment of eight key soil and landscape limitations (water erosion, wind erosion, salinity, topsoil acidification, shallow soils/rockiness, soil structure decline, waterlogging and mass movement).

The assessment of LSC is based on the mapping method and rule set (Land and Soil Capability Assessment Scheme: Second Approximation) developed by OEH (2012) and builds on the rural land capability classification and mapping undertaken for the central and eastern divisions of the state by the former Soil Conservation Service of NSW (Emery 1986) but with more emphasis on a broader range of soil and landscape properties.

The mapping uses an eight class system with values ranging between 1 and 8 that represent a decreasing capability of the land to sustain landuse. Class 1 represents land capable of sustaining most landuses including those that have a high impact on the soil (e.g., regular cultivation), whilst class 8 represents land that can only sustain very low impact landuses (e.g., nature conservation). LSC class names are: * 1: Extremely high capability land * 2: Very high capability land * 3: High capability land * 4: Moderate capability land * 5: Moderate–low capability land * 6: Low capability land * 7: Very low capability land * 8: Extremely low capability land

The ruleset can be downloaded from this LSC's Resource's page and part of the zipped data package in SEED.

Online Maps: This dataset can be viewed using eSPADE (NSW’s soil spatial viewer), which contains a suite of soil and landscape information including soil profile data. Many of these datasets have hot-linked soil reports. An alternative viewer is the SEED Map; an ideal way to see what other natural resources datasets (e.g. vegetation) are available for this map area.

Reference: Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, 2025, Land and Soil Capability Mapping for NSW, Version 4.6, NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Parramatta.