Historic Forest Canopy Cover Extent for New South Wales, 1995-2020

25-meter resolution spatial layers detail forest cover extent across all land tenures in New South Wales. The dataset, created for the NSW Natural Resources Commission, is based on Landsat-derived National Forest and Sparse Woody Vegetation Data grids processed with land-use masking and fuzzy-logic certainty analysis. Coverage spans from 1995 to 2020, with triennial or biennial layers until 2004 and annual layers thereafter.

Use Cases

• Analyze long-term deforestation or afforestation trends based on the 25-year time series.
• Model carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas inventory calculations based on forest cover extent.
• Assess the impact of land management policies across different tenures, including RFAs and IFOAs.
• Validate remote sensing classification algorithms using the fuzzy-logic based certainty analysis layers.

Strengths

• Provides a 25-year temporal series from 1995 to 2020 for longitudinal analysis.
• Offers 25-meter spatial resolution derived from Landsat imagery.
• Covers all land tenures across the entire state of New South Wales.
• Processed with a fuzzy-logic based certainty analysis to reflect coverage confidence.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data layers are triennial or biennial from 1995 to 2004, with years 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2003 missing.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.

Provenance

Source

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery, based on ABARES National Forest and Sparse Woody Vegetation Data grids.

Collection Method

Landsat-derived base grids processed through land use/vegetation exclusion masking and fuzzy-logic certainty analysis.

Time Range

1995 to 2020

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-13 12:37:35.777629; freshness should be verified.

Geography

New South Wales, Australia