National Trees

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 Trees is a raster dataset representing tree coverage and heights, derived from remotely sensed imagery.

Geoscape Australia welcomes your feedback on the National Trees Dataset. We also publish regular product development updates on our website (www.geoscape.com.au).

Release Summary

This product was released to customers on 31 March 2026 with data extracted on 4 March 2026.

  • This release is a full national data population for Version 1.8 of the National Trees product, described by the National Trees 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 Capital Territory

498

NSW

Albury City Council

73

NSW

Armidale Regional Council

26

NSW

Ballina Shire Council

31

NSW

Bayside Council

3

NSW

Blue Mountains City Council

84

NSW

Camden Council

19

NSW

Campbelltown City Council

41

NSW

Central Coast Council

137

NSW

Cessnock City Council

20

NSW

Georges River Council

15

NSW

Goulburn Mulwaree Council

30

NSW

Hawkesbury City Council

64

NSW

Ku-ring-gai Council

24

NSW

Lake Macquarie City Council

236

NSW

Lismore City Council

37

NSW

Maitland City Council

87

NSW

Mid-Coast Council

6

NSW

Newcastle City Council

119

NSW

Northern Beaches Council

63

NSW

Port Stephens Council

94

NSW

Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council

76

NSW

Shellharbour City Council

42

NSW

Shoalhaven City Council

45

NSW

Sutherland Shire Council

98

NSW

Tamworth Regional Council

38

NSW

The Council of the Shire of Hornsby

55

NSW

The Hills Shire Council

2

NSW

Tweed Shire Council

121

NSW

Wollondilly Shire Council

5

NSW

Wollongong City Council

162

NSW

Yass Valley Council

2

NT

Darwin Municipality

93

NT

Darwin Waterfront Precinct Municipality

1

NT

Litchfield Municipality

203

NT

Northern Territory Rates Act (Prescribed Area A) Area

25

NT

Palmerston Municipality

60

QLD

Brisbane City

80

QLD

Gold Coast City

439

QLD

Ipswich City

1

QLD

Lockyer Valley Regional

1

QLD

Logan City

650

QLD

Redland City

179

QLD

Scenic Rim Regional

95

QLD

Toowoomba Regional

159

VIC

Wodonga City

57

Total

4,396

^ Location names are derived from intersection with the most recent Local Government Area dataset.

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

Change Notifications

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.

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

Mar-22

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 some combination of building proximity to actual tree features, dark roof colour and/or shadow across roofs. 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

Jun-22

Trees restricted to Surface Cover extents

Trees and Surface Cover have been designed to physically align the cells. Since the introduction of new capture methods new capture areas that extend past the raster index are clipped.

This will be investigated and resolved in a future release.

Open

Sep-25

Carparks introduced as Tree features

There is an issue where carpark areas were mistakenly introduced into the Trees product. We have removed these trees within Sydney AOI_ID = ‘16837’ and Adelaide AOI_ID = ‘16183’ in the September 2025 Trees data. This issue may exist elsewhere in Australia. We will continue to resolve this issue in future releases.

This will be investigated and resolved in a future release.

Open

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 Trees Theme - Summary

Total coverage of National Trees by state

State

Total Area (km2)

QLD

4058

VIC

1333

ACTNSW

3395

TAS

286

NT

127

SA

331

WA

663

National

10192