DOI: 10.4227/163/5ad69fb297ee2
title: NSW Landuse 2013

description: The 2013 land use captures how the landscape in NSW is being used for food production, forestry, nature conservation, infrastructure and urban development. It can also be used to monitor changes in the landscape and identify resulting impacts on biodiversity values and individual ecosystems.

The state wide land use data is a compilation of the best available land use information for NSW that was available in August 2017.  

Land use and tenure datasets from a variety of projects have been compiled, these include;

- Landuse mapping 2017 – 1:10,000 scale mapping using 2013 SPOT 5 satellite imagery and ADS digital aerial imagery. Covering rural zoned, agricultural areas. These areas are applicable to Local Land Services Act 2016.

- NSW Horticulture mapping project – Fine scale mapping (1:5,000) mapping of horticulture production to the commodity level (where applicable), on the mid-north and north coast of NSW. This was in response to the outbreak of Panama disease, Tropical Race 4, found in a banana plantation in Northern Queensland. It is part of a collaborative mapping project to improve Biosecurity information between state jurisdictions and the commonwealth. It also covers plantation forestry for the project area.

- Hunter 2013 mapping – 1:10,000 scale mapping covering most of the Hunter catchment based on 2013 SPOT5 imagery. It was part of a pilot land use update trial for intended use in Department of Planning Regional Growth Plans. This is an update of the 2005 Land use Hunter catchment and 2008 Upper Hunter catchment land use mapping projects, also available on SDE and P drive.

- National Parks and State Forest Tenure mapping 2017

- Sydney Map sheet 2012 – Detailed urban mapping (1:10,000 scale) trial using high resolution Digital aerial imagery

- Existing Land use information (circa 2003) has been used for non-rural zoned areas and not covered by the other projects mentioned above. This component of the 2013 land use has a reliability scale of 1:25,000. The areas where the circa 2003 land use product used include; urban, industrial, commercial and environmental local government LEP (Local Environment Planning) zones. It also includes areas of metropolitan Sydney that are excluded from the LLS Act 2016.

Land use information has been captured in accordance with standards set by the Australian Collaborative Land Use Mapping Program (ACLUMP) and using the Australian Land Use and Management ALUM Classification. The ALUM classification is based upon the modified Baxter & Russell classification and presented according to the specifications contained in http://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/aclump/land-use/alum-classification.

The 2013 land use, that was mapped for the purposes of the Local Land Services Act, was commenced in July 2016 and completed by August 2017. It covers all rural zoned (agricultural) areas, and was based on most appropriate SPOT5 imagery to represent land use at June 2013. It includes values in the attribute fields of source, source date, source scale, reliability and land use mapping (currency) date.

The reliability scale of areas mapped form 2012 onward is 1:10,000. For areas where circa 2003 land use information has been used the reliability scale is 1:25,000. This is identified in the source scale attribute for each feature in the dataset.

The date of the data set is set as the land use occurring at the time the imagery (satellite or aerial) was acquired, which can range from 2003 to 2013. This dataset was updated in August 2017 to include values in the attribute fields of Source, Source Date, Source Scale, Reliability and LU Mapping (Currency) Date.

A national catchment scale land use product is also available as a 50m raster - Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) http://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/aclump/land-use/data-download.