Western Australia Land Use Map 2018 with ALUM Classification

Catchment Scale Land Use Mapping for Western Australia 2018 is a vector dataset compiled by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics and Sciences. It provides a seamless spatial dataset for the entire state, classifying land use according to the hierarchical Australian Land Use and Management (ALUM) Classification version 8. The data represents land use as of August 2018, derived from source data captured between 2008 and 2018.

Use Cases

• Analyze the distribution of high-level land use categories like nature conservation or dryland cropping across the seven Natural Resource Management region tiles.
• Combine ALUM tertiary class codes, such as specific commodities (e.g., bananas) or land management practices, with other spatial datasets for environmental impact studies.
• Model land use intensity by correlating the documented mapping scale (from 1:5,000 to 1:250,000) with land use categories like irrigated horticulture versus pastoral zones.
• Assess regional agricultural profiles by extracting and comparing secondary and tertiary ALUM codes for areas like the Northern Agricultural Region.
• Identify areas of concurrent land uses, such as production forests also used for conservation or grazing, based on the dataset's primary management objective logic.

Strengths

• Data covers the entire state of Western Australia as a seamless spatial dataset.
• Land use is classified using the standardized, three-tiered ALUM Classification version 8 with five primary classes.
• The dataset is tiled into seven regional shapefiles to facilitate analysis and reduce file size issues.

Limitations

• The temporal consistency is limited as source data capture dates range from 2008 to 2018.
• Mapping scale varies significantly (1:5,000 to 1:250,000) across regions, affecting detail and comparability.
• It represents only a single dominant land use per area, potentially omitting concurrent uses detailed in the classification description.

Provenance

Source

Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences

Collection Method

Compilation and derivation from various existing vector datasets relevant to land use in Western Australia.

Time Range

Source data captured between 2008 and 2018, representing land use as at August 2018.

Freshness

The underlying data reflects land use as of August 2018, though the dataset was updated in September 2021 to include tiled files.

Geography

State of Western Australia, divided into seven Natural Resource Management regions.