Sub-Theme

Australian Collaborative Land Use and Management Program

Land use mapping in Australia is coordinated by the Australian Collaborative Land Use and Management Program (ACLUMP), a consortium of state and national agencies. Mapping is conducted at two scales: national scale and catchment scale. Land use is mapped according to the nationally agreed Australian Land Use and Management (ALUM) Classification, a three-tier hierarchical structure.

  • National scale land use mapping is produced by ABARES using coarse-scale satellite data (pixel size of 1.1 square kilometres), ABS agricultural statistics and ground control point data for the agricultural land uses and various other digital maps, including the finer resolution catchment scale land use data, for the non-agricultural land uses. National scale (1:2 500 000) land use datasets have been compiled for 1992-93, 1993-94, 1996-97, 1998-99, 2000-01, 2001-02, 2005-06, 2010-11.
  • Catchment scale land use mapping is produced by the state and territory agencies using land tenure and other types of land use data, fine-scale satellite data and information collected in the field. The operational scale of catchment scale land use mapping varies according to the intensity of land-use activities and landscape context. Mapping ranges from fine scale (1:10 000 to 1:25 000) for irrigated and peri-urban areas to coarser scales for cropping regions (1:100 000) and for the semi-arid and arid pastoral zone (1:250 000). Catchment scale mapping is compiled into a national raster (50m) dataset by ABARES as new datasets are available from the jurisdictions. 

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