Integrated Vegetation Information for NAP and NRM Regions

How was the dataset compiled?

Over the last 12 years five major national and regional level vegetation-related datasets have been developed to provide information on the type of vegetation and where it is found and how it is used. These datasets include:

1. Agricultural Land Cover Change (Barson et al. 2000) (ALCC95), (Coverage Extent);
2. Forests of Australia 2003 (National Forest Inventory, 2003) (NFI03); NFI03 data includes plantation information from the National Plantation Inventory 2001 (Wood et al. 2001), (Coverage Extent);
3. 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2, National Land and Water Resources Audit (Stewart et al. 2001) (LUA97), (Coverage Extent);
4. Land Use Mapping at the Catchment Scale (Bureau of Rural Sciences 2002) (LUMCS03), (Coverage Extent);
5. National Vegetation Information System 2000 (NLWRA 2001) (NVIS00), (Coverage Extent).

Relevant attributes from each of these input datasets were collated into a 100-metre resolution grid in a GIS database and converted into the following twelve attribute classes:

1. Native forests and woodlands
2. Native shrublands and heathlands
3. Native grasslands and minimally modified pastures
4. Horticultural trees and shrubs
5. Perennial crops
6. Annual crops and highly modified pastures
7. Plantation (hardwood)
8. Plantation (softwood/mixed)
9. Bare
10. Ephemeral and Permanent Water Features
11. Built-up
12. Unknown/not reportable

To produce a standard map product across the whole of Australia, a seven-step rule set was used to integrate the relevant attributes from each of the datasets. The rule-set established the priority for integrating the input datasets from highest to lowest input attribute values. The inputs were integrated by applying the ruleset to fill in the landscape firstly with data from the highest priority input attribute, followed by the second highest, the third highest etc., until the entire landscape was filled with data or until the input data were exhausted. The ruleset was designed to achieve a compromise between maximising the reliability of the output and minimising cost of data processing (maintenance and updating).

The seven-step rule set that was used to assign a priority ranking for integrating the respective datasets from highest to lowest is as follows:

Step 1	Start with 'Built-up and water' from the ALCC95 dataset
Step 2	Add 'Plantations' from the NFI03 dataset
Step 3	Add 'Native Forests and Woodlands' from the NFI03 dataset
Step 4	Add 'Non-forest native vegetation' from the NVIS00 dataset
Step 5	Add 'Non-native vegetation and non-vegetated cover' from the LUMCS03 dataset
Step 6	Add 'Horticultural trees' from the ALCC95 dataset
Step 7	Finally add 'Non-native vegetation' and 'non-vegetated cover' from the LUA97 dataset

BRS has published a report 'Integrated Regional Vegetation Information'

More detailed information on the methods is available from BRS.

Information contained within this dataset is presented here as a dynamic series of 80 maps summarising vegetation cover in the 22 NAP and 58 NRM regions. A metadata record has been loaded on to the Australian Spatial Data Directory to enable users to download the Integrated Vegetation Cover (2003) dataset.