National Base Map WMTS: Topographic Mapping for Australia and Territories

The National Base Map WMTS service provides seamless topographic colour mapping for Australia, its outer islands, and external territories. The map portrays detailed graphic representations of cultural, hydrography, marine, transport, vegetation and relief themes, sourced from Geoscience Australia, Australian Antarctic Division, OpenStreetMap, and other programs. Data for Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands comes from specific NATMAP datasets, and vegetation for the continent is aggregated from ACLUMP.

Use Cases

• Create detailed topographic visualizations based on cultural, hydrography, marine, transport, vegetation and relief themes.
• Analyze land use patterns based on vegetation data aggregated from the Australian Collaborative Land Use and Management Program.
• Integrate road network data for Australia based on OpenStreetMap contributions.
• Assess terrain relief based on processed SRTM DEM data acquired by NASA.
• Map coastal and marine features based on bathymetry sourced from Natural Earth.

Strengths

• Covers the whole of Australia, including outer islands and external territories.
• Integrates data from multiple authoritative sources including Geoscience Australia, OpenStreetMap, and ACLUMP.
• Includes specific datasets for Christmas Island (1:30,000 scale) and Cocos (Keeling) Islands (1:25,000 scale).

Limitations

• Topographic information was checked in 2008 and supplemented in 2009, with limited field checking, so some information may not be accurate.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, Australian Antarctic Division, OpenStreetMap, ACLUMP, Natural Earth.

Collection Method

Aggregated from multiple mapping datasets and programs.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 16:22:28.102729; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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