Summary:
A comprehensive NSW Land Tenure layer has been developed, integrating the latest and most reliable datasets sourced from various governmental authorities and departments. To the best of our knowledge, this layer offers detailed mapping of recent updates and changes in land tenure across the state. It includes information on land allocations, ownership transformations, and management updates, providing an up-to-date and accurate representation of land tenure in New South Wales.
Description:
The statewide Land Tenure layer is a comprehensive dataset created by incorporating spatial and aspatial data from various state and commonwealth government departments, organisations and authorities, including the Forestry Corporation of NSW; NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development; NSW Spatial Services; Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (Environment and Heritage); The Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (ABARES: SOFR23 & SOFR18); the NSW SEED data portal; and National Park.
The wall-to-wall spatial feature class demonstrates how land in NSW is being managed or owned. It can also be employed to monitor changes in land management or ownership transfer over time.
The process of acquiring datasets for updating the tenure layer and creating the statewide layer began in January 2024 and continued until August 2024. The collected datasets were amalgamated, and gaps were filled. This combined layer has then been manually assessed and visually compared against various datasets to ensure its completeness and accuracy. Esri basemaps such as Imagery, Imagery Hybrid, OpenStreetMap, and Google Earth maps were also used for visual assessment. Furtheremore, expert knowledge from government professionals, and land history web search were considered to address potential inaccuracies and unreliability in datasets from various sources.
The land tenure data consists of seven Tenure classes each class covering various tenure types as below:
- Tenure Class: presents tenure classification of the dataset as Crownland-Leasehold; Crownland-Other; Indigenous Owned; National Park; Private; State Forest; Unresolved Tenure.
Tenure Type of each tenure class are as follow: Crownland-Leasehold: Crown Timberland Lease; LEASE (SOFR2023); Leasehold Crown Land; Western Lands Lease; Crownland-Other: Crown Road; Crown Waterway; Either Crown Waterway, Road or other; OCL (SOFR2023); Other crownland; Public Road; Reserved Crown Timber Land; Timber Reserve; Vacant And Reserved Crown Land; Vacant Crown Land; Reserve for Public Buildings (Forestry); Indigenous Owned: Aboriginal Area; National Park: Conservation Reserve; Fire trail within national parks; Historic Sites; National Park; Nature Reserve; NCR (SOFR2023); Regional Park; State Conservation Area; Private: Hardwood Joint Venture; PRIV (SOFR2023); Private; Hardwood Plantations; Private Property; Private Softwood Plantation; Profit á Prendre; Softwood Joint Venture; State Forest: FCNSW Ownership; MUF (SOFR2023); State Forest: State Forest OEH Managed Flora Reserve; Unresolved Tenure: null (-2); ND (SOFR2023).
- Shape_Area: Area of each Tenure class in square meter.
Caveats:
- In general, data from diverse sources retains different levels of accuracy, reliability and coverage, therefore, a thorough visual assessment has been carried out to overcome the issue. Having said that, there still could be potential minor errors which could have been missed due to the large extent of the dataset.
- Note that Roads, Waterways and general public areas across the Greater Sydney and Wollongong have not been properly mapped in this version. This will be updated in the next update.
