Urban Forest Vegetation Height And Canopy Coverage By Land Parcel

Urban Forest Mesh Blocks - 2014, published by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage, provides calculated vegetation height strata and canopy coverage for land parcels across multiple years. The data includes area measurements for vegetation height categories (0-3m, 3-8m, 8-15m, 15+m) and grass coverage (0-50cm), aggregated by land use categories and mesh block locational data.

Use Cases

• Analyze total canopy coverage in square metres aggregated by MB_MonitorCategory to assess urban forest density.
• Model vegetation height strata areas (0-3m, 3-8m, 8-15m, 15+m) against land use categories like Street Block or Parks for urban planning.
• Calculate canopy coverage percentages using the MBPercentage field to compare vegetation cover across different publication years (2009, 2014, 2016, 2018).
• Assess grass covered areas in the 0-50 cm range per land parcel to evaluate ground-level vegetation.

Strengths

• Data spans multiple publication years (2009, 2014, 2016, 2018) for temporal comparison.
• Includes specific vegetation height strata categories and a calculated total canopy coverage metric.
• Parcels are attributed with detailed land use categories such as Street Block, Parks, Roads, and Rural.

Limitations

• Aggregated mesh block boundaries and MBAreas may not match official ABS mesh block boundaries due to centroid-based assignment.
• The percentage of parcels with Urban Forest values for a given year varies, indicated by the MBPercentage field, which can complicate direct year-to-year comparisons.

Provenance

Source

Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage, using parcel data from the 2016 Integrated Land Information Database (ILID).

Collection Method

Vegetation height strata calculated from CSIRO's Urban Monitor mosaic derived from Landgate high-resolution aerial imagery.

Time Range

Data published for years 2009, 2014, 2016, and 2018.

Freshness

Last updated March 2026.

Geography

Land parcels assigned locational data based on 2016 ABS meshblocks, suburbs, local government authority (LGA), and planning sub-region.