Australian Topographic Map Series at 1:250,000 Scale

Australia's AUSTopo digital topographic map series provides continent-wide coverage at a 1:250,000 scale, comprising 516 standard and special map sheets. Each standard sheet covers approximately 1.5 degrees longitude by 1 degree latitude, depicting natural and constructed features like roads, vegetation, hydrography, and 50-meter contours. The series is produced by Geoscience Australia and uses GDA94/GDA2020 datum with UTM projection.

Use Cases

• Extract road and rail infrastructure features for national transportation network analysis.
• Analyze hydrography and 50-meter contour intervals for regional watershed and terrain modeling.
• Identify vegetation coverage and administrative boundaries for land-use planning studies.
• Combine standard and special map sheets for coastal area analysis where land and ocean data are merged.

Strengths

• Continent-wide coverage of Australia through 516 map sheets.
• Standardized scale of 1:250,000, the largest scale covering the entire continent.
• Includes multiple geographic datums (GDA94, GDA2020) and UTM projection for coordinate accuracy.

Limitations

• Data is provided in PDF format, requiring extraction for geospatial analysis.
• Map sheets may contain information from surrounding sheets, potentially complicating precise boundary analysis.
• Approximately 50 special maps cover non-standard areas, which may require additional handling for systematic processing.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Published digital topographic map series.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated March 2026.

Geography

Australia