Illawarra Plant Community Type Vegetation Map, 2016

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water compiled this native vegetation map for the Wollongong, Shellharbour, and Kiama local government areas. It stitches together existing maps and classifies units into NSW Plant Community Types and relates them to threatened ecological communities as of 31 December 2016. The layer was a key input for the Illawarra Biodiversity Investment Opportunities Map.

Use Cases

• Identify areas of high conservation value based on mapped Plant Community Types.
• Assess threats to biodiversity by relating map units to listed threatened ecological communities.
• Inform land-use planning and investment decisions using the derived Biodiversity Investment Opportunities Map.

Strengths

• Spatial coverage includes three local government areas: Wollongong, Shellharbour, and Kiama.
• Integrates multiple existing mapping products into a single compiled layer.
• Links vegetation units to official NSW Plant Community Types and legislative lists as of a specific date (31 December 2016).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to data_gov_au, focusing only on the Illawarra region.

Provenance

Source

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Collection Method

Compilation and stitching of previously existing native vegetation maps.

Time Range

Snapshot as of 31 December 2016.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-12 17:33:51.434543; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Wollongong, Shellharbour, and Kiama local government areas, New South Wales, Australia.