Land Use

Wombat Forest Estate | Land Capability Studies | Public Land | You Yangs Land Capability

Port Phillip Landuse

This map provides an overview of land use across the Port Phillip and Westernport region and has been generalised from more detailed mapping completed as part of the South-West Land Use Mapping project. The procedure used to develop the South-West Land Use Map balanced the need for reliable data, practicality and cost effectiveness.

Mapping scales depended on land use intensity and range between 1:25 000 and 1:100 000. The South-West Land Use map was produced through a series of steps. The first was to combine accurate digital data sources describing land use (such as the public land management layer) with the state cadastre. This formed a draft land use atlas. The gaps in the draft atlas were then filled by desktop interpretation of aerial photos, roadside inspection of land use and supervised classification of satellite imagery. Each homogeneous polygon in the cadastre was assigned a class in the Australian Land Use and Management Classification scheme. At the time of classification the data source, its date and accuracy were noted in the map attribute table. This means that the land use map does not describe the land use at one moment in time but over a range of dates in 2000 and 2001.

Validation of the final map occurred in late 2002 and early 2003. It was undertaken according to the requirements set out by the Bureau of Rural Sciences (BRS) (external link) which meant that people not involved in the map making were sent out to 50 or 100 (depending on the land use intensity) randomly selected sites in each 1:100 000 map sheet to verify the land use. This was compared with the map using an error matrix. If a 1:100 000 map sheet was found to have an accuracy greater than 80% the map was finalised; if the accuracy was lower than 80% then further field checking was required before the map could be finalised.

Acknowledgements

A large contribution to the technical method development and implementation of land use mapping in Victoria has been made by the former DPI's PIRVic staff from the Tatura and Werribee Centres. Many hours of field work, GIS editing and field validation were undertaken by staff from the former DPI's Werribee Centre for the South West Land Use Mapping Project. For further details contact Elizabeth Morse-McNabb (Elizabeth.Morse-McNabb@depi.vic.gov.au).

Related Links

Land use information on the Statewide VRO website.