National Surface Cover

Disclaimer

Geoscape Australia believes this publication to be correct at the time of printing and does not accept responsibility for any consequences arising from the use of the information herein. Readers should rely on their own skill and judgement to apply information to particular issues.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission of Geoscape Australia.

Overview

National 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 National 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 30 September 2026 with data extracted on 5 September 2026.

• This release is a full national data population for Version 1.8 of the National Surface Cover product, described by the National 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.

Locations of updated areas by State.

State	Location	Urban Area (km2)
ACT	Australian Captial Territory	498
NSW	Bathurst Regional Council	60
NSW	Blacktown City Council	158
NSW	Blue Mountains City Council	14
NSW	Camden Council	122
NSW	Campbelltown City Council	161
NSW	Cumberland Council	12
NSW	Fairfield City Council	87
NSW	Hawkesbury City Council	312
NSW	Ku-ring-gai Council	11
NSW	Liverpool City Council	218
NSW	Murray River Council	18
NSW	Northern Beaches Council	63
NSW	Penrith City Council	250
NSW	Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council	76
NSW	Sutherland Shire Council	40
NSW	The Council of the Shire of Hornsby	129
NSW	The Hills Shire Council	197
NSW	Wagga Wagga City Council	104
NSW	Wollondilly Shire Council	32
NSW	Yass Valley Council	2
NT	Alice Springs Municipality	46
QLD	Fraser Coast Regional	57
QLD	Gladstone Regional	50
QLD	Gympie Regional	33
QLD	Livingstone Shire	32
SA	Adelaide Hills Council	4
SA	Alexandrina Council	23
SA	City of Adelaide	15
SA	City of Burnside	25
SA	City of Charles Sturt	55
SA	City of Holdfast Bay	14
SA	City of Marion	56
SA	City of Mitcham	55
SA	City of Mount Gambier	30
SA	City of Onkaparinga	132
SA	City of Playford	97
SA	City of Port Adelaide Enfield	92
SA	City of Prospect	8
SA	City of Salisbury	104
SA	City of Tea Tree Gully	66
SA	City of Unley	14
SA	City of Victor Harbor	26
SA	City of West Torrens	37
SA	Light Regional Council	32
SA	The Barossa Council	5
SA	The City of Norwood Payneham and St Peters	15
SA	The Corporation of the City of Whyalla	22
SA	The Corporation of the Town of Walkerville	4
SA	The DC of Grant	5
SA	Town of Gawler	40
SA	UIA Whyalla	1
VIC	Ballarat City	145
VIC	Campaspe Shire	25
VIC	Greater Bendigo City	178
VIC	Greater Shepparton City	57
VIC	Latrobe City	70
Total		4234

[1]

Location names are derived from an intersection with the most recent National Local Government Area dataset, Geoscape, 2023.

Spatial files of the updated areas are available upon request via support@geoscape.com.au.

Change Notifications

Update to RASTER_INDEX and CAPTURE_INDEX schema

For the December Release we will be standardising the schema by renaming the existing id text field to area_id to better reflect its purpose as a domain-specific identifier, while the id field is being repurposed as a standard ascending integer (id/objectid) to align with common GIS and database conventions. This change ensures compatibility with downstream tools and workflows that expect a unique, numeric primary key, simplifies joins and indexing, and reduces ambiguity between internal record identifiers and externally meaningful area codes.

Versioning Update (Starting June 2026)

Beginning June 2026, all data products will transition to a standardised versioning format: MAJOR-MINOR-EXTRACT (e.g., 004-000-001). This approach provides a clear and consistent structure, making it easier for users to identify product versions and understand update levels at a glance. The change is intended to improve transparency, reduce ambiguity, and support more efficient integration and usage of our data products.

Implementation of New Zip File Naming and Packaging Standards (Starting August 2026)

As part of ongoing improvements to product consistency and packaging standards, updates to zip file naming conventions and internal packaging structure will be implemented, starting in August 2026.

Zip File Naming

Two standard naming patterns will be used, depending on whether an extract contains spatial information:

• Spatial Tables:

{PRODUCT-NAME}_{RELEASE YYYYMM}_{REGION}_{CRS}_{FORMAT}_{VERSION MAJOR-MINOR-EXTRACT}.zip

• Aspatial (Insights) Tables:

{PRODUCT-NAME}_{RELEASE YYYYMM}_{REGION}_NODATUM_{FORMAT}_{VERSION MAJOR-MINOR-EXTRACT}.zip

Packaging Structure

All zip files will follow a simplified, flat directory layout:

• No nested folders

• The primary data file will be located at the top level of the zip.

Note: The product package will no longer include supporting content.txt files.

These changes ensure consistent packaging across all products, reduce complexity, and support improved automation and user experience.

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

National Surface Cover Coverage

Total coverage of National Surface Cover by type

Code	Description	Total Area (km2)
2	Bare Earth	12404
3	Road and Path	2074
4	Grass	10130
5	Trees	9287
6	Unspecified Vegetation	9811
7	Built-up Areas	1227
8	Water	2185
9	Buildings	3926
10	Cloud	4
11	Shadow	359
12	Swimming Pool	62
13	Car Park	421

Total coverage of National Surface Cover by state

State	Total Area (km2)
QLD	13132
VIC	9770
ACTNSW	17199
TAS	1793
NT	986
SA	3711
WA	5297
National	51889

References

[Geoscape, 2023]

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/.