Surface Cover¶
Disclaimer
Overview¶
Surface Cover is a raster dataset representing land cover categories across Australia. Urban Surface Cover has coverage in pre-defined urban locations across Australia at 2 metre resolution, while the National Surface Cover has complete national coverage at 30 metre resolution.
Geoscape Australia welcomes your feedback on the Surface Cover Dataset. We also publish regular product development updates on our website (www.geoscape.com.au).
Release Summary¶
This product was released to customers on 16 December 2024 with data extracted on 3 December 2024.
This release is a full national data population for Version 1.8 of the Surface Cover product, described by the Surface Cover Product Description v1.8.
Any issues that have been identified for this release are described in the Issues section.
This release includes updates for the areas listed in the table below.
State |
Location |
Urban Area (km2) |
---|---|---|
NSW |
Blacktown City Council |
132 |
NSW |
Blue Mountains City Council |
14 |
NSW |
Camden Council |
9 |
NSW |
Cumberland Council |
8 |
NSW |
Fairfield City Council |
82 |
NSW |
Griffith City Council |
28 |
NSW |
Liverpool City Council |
194 |
NSW |
Parkes Shire Council |
39 |
NSW |
Penrith City Council |
247 |
NSW |
Wollondilly Shire Council |
23 |
QLD |
Sunshine Coast Regional |
16 |
VIC |
Greater Bendigo City |
183 |
Total |
975 |
Spatial files of the updated areas are available upon request via support@geoscape.com.au.
Change Notifications¶
No changes to note.
Issues¶
New Issues¶
No new issues to note.
Resolved Issues¶
No resolved issues to note.
Known Issues¶
The progress and status of known, ongoing issues are summarised below. For specific and further details on each issue, please refer to the Release Report identified in the ‘Release identified’ column.
Ongoing product issues¶
Release Identified |
Theme - Issue Name |
Issue Brief Description |
Progress/Resolution |
Status |
---|---|---|---|---|
Dec-16 |
Building - Tree heights near buildings and other trees |
Terrain elevation values used in the calculation of tree heights have been found in some cases to be affected by the surrounding tall features such as buildings and other trees. |
No update at this time. |
Open |
Apr-17 |
Urban and National Surface Cover - Shadow and Cloud |
An increase in the amount of shadow found in the Surface Cover layer, in some circumstances, has impacted on the shape and height of buildings as well as surface cover and trees. |
Geoscape has worked with its partners to limit the capture and use of imagery that contains significant cloud and shadow for future releases. The future maintenance programs will be targeting areas affected by significant cloud and shadow. |
Open |
Nov-21 |
Trees over-capture |
On Buildings, it has been observed that there are some situations where significant portions of some roofs have been captured as tree features. This is different from actual tree overhang and may be due to some combination of building proximity to trees, dark roof colour and/or shadow across roofs. Tree features in Surface Cover, where they intersect with buildings, are retained and represented over building features. This is because tree over-hang does exist in the real world, and also to ensure these tree pixels correspond to the Trees product. In Dense, Shadowed and Water Areas, the spectral signature of these areas can incorrectly result in features being extracted as trees during remote sensing. Height calculation can help to exclude the majority of these during production, but where heights are determined to be greater than 2 metres they may persist. |
We are working with our partner to limit these occurrences, as well as improving our processes to identify and correct the situations where they are present. |
Open |
Nov-21 |
Updates based on Tree and Buildings classes |
Since November 2021 Updates are limited to Building, Tree and Unspecified Vegetation classes according to the captured aerial imagery for the Trees and Buildings products. If a building or tree pixel is no longer covered by building or trees features according to the update, it will be converted to Built-up Areas or Unspecified Vegetation, respectively. Where pixels are covered by Buildings, Trees or Unspecified Vegetation according to the update, they will be retained or updated accordingly. |
Methods and sources to update additional Surface Cover classes beyond Building, Tree and Unspecified Vegetation are currently being investigated. |
|
Jun-22 |
Over classification of building class |
The building classification in areas updated for the November 2021 and March 2022 releases have not received the improved aerial building representation. |
Resolved for updated areas in the June 2022 and November 2021 and March 2022 will be resolved in a future release. |
Future Considerations¶
This section outlines enhancements or changes under consideration, but not planned into a specific release. For further details on future initiatives, please contact Geoscape Support.
Annex A – Release Counts¶
Urban Surface Cover Coverage¶
Total coverage of Urban Surface Cover by type¶
Code |
Description |
Total Area (km2) |
---|---|---|
2 |
Bare Earth |
13273 |
3 |
Road and Path |
2118 |
4 |
Grass |
10457 |
5 |
Trees |
9992 |
6 |
Unspecified Vegetation |
8773 |
7 |
Built-up Areas |
1330 |
8 |
Water |
2200 |
9 |
Buildings |
3549 |
10 |
Cloud |
4 |
11 |
Shadow |
375 |
12 |
Swimming Pool |
30 |
13 |
Car Park |
229 |
Total coverage of Urban Surface Cover by state¶
State |
Total Area (km2) |
---|---|
QLD |
12956 |
VIC |
9830 |
ACTNSW |
17757 |
TAS |
1793 |
NT |
986 |
SA |
3711 |
WA |
5297 |
National |
52329 |
References¶
Geoscape. Local government areas. 2023. URL: https://docs.geoscape.com.au/projects/lga_guide/en/stable/index.html, arXiv:https://docs.geoscape.com.au/_/downloads/lga_guide/en/stable/pdf/.