1992-93, 1993-94, 1996-97, 1998-99, 2000-01 and 2001-02 Land Use of Australia, Version 3

Publication date: 21 September 2006

Land Use of Australia, Version 3, is a series of land use maps of Australia for the years 1992/93, 1993/94, 1996/97, 1998/99, 2000/01 and 2001/02.

Agricultural land uses and their spatial distributions are based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics' agricultural census and survey data. The spatial distribution of the agricultural land uses is modelled and was determined using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) satellite imagery with training data to make agricultural land use allocations. The non-agricultural land uses are drawn from existing digital maps covering seven themes: topographic features, catchment scale land use, protected areas, World Heritage Areas, tenure, forest type and vegetation condition.

The maps are supplied as a set of ARC/INFO (Trademark) grids with geographical coordinates referred to GDA94 and 0.01 degree cell size. For each of the years mapped there is a set of probability maps, one for each agricultural land use and a single summary map showing the non-agricultural land uses and a likely arrangement of the agricultural land uses.

The arrangement of agricultural land uses in the summary map was determined from the probability maps using some simple rules to make an approximation to a maximum likelihood land use map. As supplied, the probability maps are floating point grids with cell value between 0 and 1 and no value attribute table while the summary map is an integer grid with a value attribute table with attributes defining the agricultural commodity group, irrigation status and land use according to the Australian Land Use and Management Classification (ALUMC), Version 5.

Prospective users of the data should note the caveats and additional metadata, which are included in the document entitled 'User Guide and Caveats: 1992/93, 1993/94, 1996/97, 1998/99, 2000/01 and 2001/02 Land Use of Australia, Version 3'.