Melbourne Urban Tree Canopy Polygons from 2016 Aerial Imagery

City of Melbourne tree canopy extents mapped using 2016 aerial photography and LiDAR. The canopy polygons represent actual tree coverage on both private and public property across the municipality. The dataset is provided in multiple geospatial formats including SHP, JSON, CSV, and GEOJSON.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial distribution of canopy polygons to assess urban forest equity across public and private land.
• Measure total canopy area from polygon extents to track urban greening goals for the City of Melbourne.
• Integrate canopy polygons with other spatial data layers to model ecosystem services like shade and stormwater interception.
• Use the 2016 aerial and LiDAR-derived canopy data as a baseline for change detection in subsequent urban forest studies.

Strengths

• Derived from aerial photography and LiDAR, providing a detailed and accurate spatial representation of canopy extents.
• Covers the entire City of Melbourne municipality, including both private and public property.
• Available in multiple interoperable geospatial formats (SHP, JSON, CSV, GEOJSON).
• Released under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license for flexible reuse.

Limitations

• Data represents a single snapshot from 2016 and may not reflect current canopy conditions.
• The absence of column metadata limits understanding of specific polygon attributes beyond spatial extents.
• Derived from remote sensing; canopy identification may have errors in complex urban environments.

Provenance

Source

City of Melbourne Open Data

Collection Method

Mapped from 2016 aerial photos and LiDAR.

Time Range

2016

Freshness

Last updated March 2026, though the underlying data collection is from 2016.

Geography

City of Melbourne municipality, Australia