NSW Neighbourhood Habitat Intactness Index: Habitat Quality and Connectivity

NSW Neighbourhood Habitat Intactness Index measures the quality and connectivity of terrestrial habitat for every 90x90 meter pixel across New South Wales. The index, created by the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, combines remote sensing and expert input to produce annual scores from 2017 onward. It underpins the state's Biodiversity Indicator Program and is reported in the NSW Biodiversity Outlook Report.

Use Cases

• Assess regional habitat integrity for conservation planning based on statewide habitat intactness scores.
• Model ecological carrying capacity for native species based on habitat quality and connectivity metrics.
• Monitor changes in habitat availability over time using the annual time series from 2017.
• Prioritize areas for ecological restoration based on low NHI index values.

Strengths

• Provides near-complete statewide coverage for New South Wales.
• Offers annual data layers from 2017 with a consistent 90-meter pixel resolution.
• Index values are standardized on a scale from 0.0 to 1.0 for direct comparison.

Limitations

• Data has a two-year time lag for the most recent layer due to input availability.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Created using the NSW Habitat Intactness Index as input to a multi-scale neighbourhood habitat area analysis.

Time Range

Annually from 2017 onward

Freshness

Updated until 2026-05-17; most recent data layer has a two-year lag.

Geography

New South Wales, Australia