Australia National Base Map with Topographic and Land Cover Features

A seamless topographic color map service covering Australia, its outer islands, and external territories. The map integrates data from Geoscience Australia, the Australian Antarctic Division, OpenStreetMap, and other sources, portraying cultural, hydrographic, marine, transport, vegetation, and relief themes. Topographic information was checked in 2008 and supplemented in 2009, with contributions from multiple Australian government departments.

Use Cases

• Create detailed regional maps based on integrated cultural, hydrographic, and relief themes.
• Analyze land cover and vegetation patterns using the aggregated ACLUMP vegetation layer.
• Study coastal and marine features with bathymetry data sourced from Natural Earth.
• Compare topographic representations at different scales using GEODATA TOPO 250K and OpenStreetMap data.

Strengths

• Covers the entire Australian continent, its outer islands, and external territories, including Antarctic claims.
• Integrates data from multiple authoritative sources including Geoscience Australia, OpenStreetMap, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
• Includes specific high-resolution mapping for Christmas Island (1:30,000 scale) and Cocos (Keeling) Islands (1:25,000 scale).

Limitations

• Limited field checking was undertaken; the description notes some information may not be accurate.
• Topographic base information was last checked using satellite imagery in 2008 and supplemented in 2009, which may affect currency.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after accessing the service.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, Australian Antarctic Division, OpenStreetMap, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Natural Earth.

Collection Method

Integrated from multiple topographic mapping datasets, satellite imagery, and contributed sources.

Time Range

Primary topographic data checked in 2008-2009; SRTM data acquired February 2000; suburb layers from 2018 and 2020.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 09:07:12.549069; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australia, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island, Macquarie Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island, Heard and McDonald Islands, Australian Antarctic Territory.