Title

Forest Types of Victoria 

Alternate title

FORTYPE500 

Purpose

This dataset provides an overview of Victorian forest types and has been used for broad scale planning in forest management and Land Conservation Council Victoria (LCC) evaluations. 

Credit

Ian Edwards - field mapping; LCC (Vic) Vegetation Maps; Bill Peel, Flora Branch - NRE; David Adams, Forests Service -NRE; Peter Woodgate, Peter Black, Stephen Farrell, NRS - NRE 

Supplemental Information

History: This layer was previously called VEG500 but renamed to a more appropriate name on 21 April, 1996 when the layer was documented and approved by the DDRG. Custodianship of this layer has been transferred to the Forest Service as of 11/04/2000. Relationship to other Datasets: The FORTYPE500 dataset will be superseded at the 1:100,000 by the SVEG100 dataset. There should be a broad consistency between the two datasets. The external forest boundary of the FORTYPE500 dataset is derived from the Forest Cover Changes in Victoria (FCOV500_7287) dataset which was derived from 1987 LANDSAT MSS imagery. Some anomalies have been found in the boundary and require checking. The FORTYPE500 is registered to the 1:500,000 topographic features. Current Design Issues: The current layer design has been kept simple with only the one PAT item (FTYPE). The FTYPE item is used to reference the dominant and two associated forest species, maximum and minimum mature stand height, foliage cover, and broad forest type category. The current structure is designed to assist limited dataset updates and not display / query operations. Future Design Issues: The current reference table that contains primary forest attributes should be directly linked to the coverage to allow unique polygon attribute editing and querying. The dominant and associated species should be referenced using the standard numeric species codes developed by the Flora Section, NRE and used in the Structural Vegetation layer (SVEG100). Related Documents: None Forest Cover Changes Victoria - 1972 to 1987, Woodgate and Black (1988) 

Status

Completed  

Horizontal Accuracy

500m  

Code

4283 

Maintenance and update frequency

Unknown  

Topic category

• Biota
• Farming

Classification

Unclassified  

Statement

Dataset Source: This dataset is derived from 1:250,000 and 1:100,000 structural vegetation mapping undertaken by the LCC, supplemented by the Ian Edwards forest type map at 1:1,000,000. The external tree coverage boundary is from 1987 LANDSAT MSS imagery. All internal forest type boundaries were manually interpreted and mapped onto a 1:500,000 stable base map. Dataset Originality: Derived 

Description

Collection Method: Remote Sensed - Satellite, Remote Sensed - Airborne, Field Measurements, Field Notes, Aerial Photo Interpretation, Expert Interviews 

Description

External tree coverage boundary is derived from the NRE geospatial library dataset FCOV500_7287. 

Classification

Unclassified  

Attribute Quality

Comments

Systematic checking of attributes suggests: 1 - polygons greater than 500 ha - an error 1:50 (approx. 98% accuracy) 2 - polygons less than 500 ha - an error of 1:20 (approx 95% accuracy) 

Positional Accuracy

Comments

Precision: 100m to 1km Determination: Comparisons to existing 1:500,000 topographic mapping and internal database consistencies. Some information was captured at 1:100,000. 

Conceptual Consistency

Comments

The common name of the dominant tree species (referenced using the DESCRIPTION attribute in the FORTYPE500.LUT) in most cases directly relates to the scientific name of the species (identified with the DOMINANT attribute in the FORTYPE500.LUT). 

Missing Data

Comments

Source information will be periodically refined - but the described dataset is viewed as complete for forest areas as defined by Woodgate and Black (1988) where forest is defined to have a mature stand height greater than 2m and a projective foliage cover greater than 10%. Source information will be periodically refined - but the described dataset is viewed as complete for forest areas as defined by Woodgate and Black (1988) where forest is defined to have a mature stand height greater than 2m and a projective foliage cover greater than 10%. 

Excess Data