This layer contains digital mapping of the native vegetation communities of the Sydney Metropolitan area. Vegetation communities have been derived from the analysis of 2200 floristic sites collated for the study area. Identified vegetation communities have been related to currently listed threatened ecological communities listed under the NSW TSC Act, 1995 and the Commonwealth EPBC Act, 1999. Native vegetation communities have been mapped using a combination of detailed image interpretation, relationships between sample sites and abiotic environmental variables. The derived digital data layer includes fields that describe the vegetation community, interpreted dominant species and understorey characteristics, interpretation confidence, disturbance type and severity, NSW vegetation formation and classes and related NSW Plant Community Types. These are described in detail in technical reports OEH (2016) The Native Vegetation of the Sydney Metropolitan Area. Volume 1: Technical Report. Version 3.0. Office of Environment and Heritage Sydney. OEH (2016) The Native Vegetation of the Sydney Metropolitan Area. Volume 2: Vegetation Community Profiles. Version 3.0. NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Sydney. Version 3.0 of the Native Vegetation of the Sydney Metropolitan Area updates the Plant Community Type and Biometric Vegetation Type of each map unit.

Version 3.0 replaced version 2.0 (VIS_ID 3817) and created a seamless alignment between the GIS layer and the Plant Community and Biometric Vegetation Types in the Biodiversity Assessment Method tool. These were the only significant updates from version 2.0.

Version 3.1 is a minor update. Two new attribute fields were added - PCTID and PCTName. These fields align with the Bionet Vegetation map data standard v1.0(https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/research-and-publications/publications-search/bionet-vegetation-map-data-standard-version-1). PCTID was populated by the v3.0 attribute field, PCT_code. PCTName was populated by extracting the corresponding PCT common name from the Bionet Vegetation Classification web service (https://data.bionet.nsw.gov.au/). No other changes were made to the vegetation map.

VIS_ID 4489