• Change text size
• Skip to content

Australian Natural Resources Atlas

Natural Resource Topics

• About us
• Contact us

Search:

Land Use - Land Use in New South Wales

Specify a region: -- select region -- Bega River Bellinger River Benanee Border Rivers Brunswick River Bulloo River Castlereagh River Clarence River Clyde River - Jervis Bay Condamine-Culgoa Rivers Coopers Creek Darling River East Gippsland Gwydir River Hastings River Hawkesbury River Hunter River Karuah River Lachlan River Lake Bancannia Lake Frome Lake George Lower Murray River Macleay River Macquarie - Tuggerah Lakes Macquarie-Bogan Rivers Manning River Moonie River Moruya River Murray-Riverina Murrumbidgee River Namoi River Paroo River Richmond River Shoalhaven River Snowy River Sydney Coast - Georges River Towamba River Tuross River Tweed River Upper Murray River Warrego River Wollongong Coast

Land Use in New South Wales

Land Use patterns

New South Wales is the most populous and heavily industrialised State in Australia, with a highly urbanised population. Its capital is Sydney, Australia's largest city and one of the world's great seaports. In 1999, New South Wales had a population of 6.4 million people.

The bases of the State's economy are agricultural and pastoral industries, a broadly based manufacturing sector, ample stocks of coal and highly developed service industries. The rich agriculture and mining sectors form the mainstay of its export-earning ability.

New South Wales lies in the temperate zone and the climate is generally free from extremes of heat and cold. Rainfall varies widely over the state, gradually diminishing to an annual average of 180 mm in the far north-west.

The State can be divided in four main zones: the coastal lowlands, the tablelands formed by the Great Dividing Range, the western slopes and the western plains.

The tablelands form the main watershed where the coastal rivers and those that flow inland originate. This zone also contains the Snowy Mountains, with Australia's highest peak, Mount Kosciusko (2228 m). The world's finest wools are grown on the tablelands as well as lamb and beef.

Most cultivation occurs on the fertile western slopes that receive regular and adequate rainfall. The western slopes are a major area for fine-wool sheep, beef cattle and wheat. In the north, lambs, pigs and fodder crops are produced, particularly in the Namoi Valley and around Inverell. A cotton industry is centred on Wee Waa. On the central slopes are many orchards; the main crops are cherries, apples and pears. Bathurst and Cowra have a vegetable canning industry. In addition to sheep, cattle and wheat, the south-western slopes produce fodder crops, notably at Gundagai and Wagga Wagga.

The coastal region is mostly used for mixed farming, including dairying and timber. In the north, sugar and bananas are grown. Beef cattle are grazed extensively on the ranges.

The western plains comprise almost two-thirds of the State and are dominated by pastoral activities. The eastern part of the western plains is the main wool and wheat area of the State. In the Riverina district of the central plains lies a large area irrigated from the Murrumbidgee River, producing orchard crops, grapes, rice, lambs and hay. The western plains form a semi-arid area where raising sheep for wool is the only significant industry, apart from the lead-zinc mining at Broken Hill. Orchards and vineyards lie along the Murray River.

The State's major rivers are the Hawkesbury, Hunter, Macleay, Clarence, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, Macquarie-Bogan, Namoi, Gwydir and Castlereagh.

Agricultural activities occupied 81 percent of New South Wales (or 15.6 million hectares) and were worth $8.3 billion in 1996/97. Grazing of native pastures accounts for 84 percent of this area with the rest largely dryland agriculture. In 1996/97, irrigated agriculture covered over 955000 hectares making New South Wales the most irrigated State. The gross value of cropping was $4.1 billion, livestock industries $3.3 billion and horticulture $0.8 billion.

The 5.3 million hectares of nature conservation is dominated by the IUCN categories national park (51 percent) and wilderness area (29 percent). Forestry covering 4 percent of the State tends to abut nature conservation and/or minimal use. Eighty-five percent of minimal use is remnant native cover on private land.

View an A4 size map of NSW land uses

Acknowledgments and Caveats

The 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2, is the source of the Australian land use information, maps agricultural and non-agricultural land uses for April 1996 to March 1997.

Non-agricultural land uses were derived from a number of available data sets:

• Protected areas are from the Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database compiled and maintained by Environment Australia (CAPAD97 for Tasmania and CAPAD99 for mainland Australia).
• The topographic features of waterbodies, built-up areas and licensed airports are from TOPO-250K Version 1 (February 1999 update) released by Geoscience Australia.
• The 1997 Australian Land Tenure Data Set compiled by the National Forest Inventory (NFI) provided distribution of public, private and aboriginal land in Australia. Native and plantation forests are from the 1997 Australian Native and Plantation Forestry Data Set compiled by the NFI. The forestry data was improved by inclusion of Queensland plantation data from the 1995 Australian Land Cover Data Set prepared by the Bureau of Rural Sciences.

Agricultural land uses were determined through an automated process to spatially allocate the agricultural census data using satellite imagery using a method described as SPREAD (Walker & Mallawaarachchi 1998). Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data captured by the Australian Centre for Remote Sensing was processed by CSIRO Division of Marine Research. Further processing was undertaken by Environment Australia to provide maximum NDVI (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index) composite images with the majority of cloud contamination removed.

Control sites were provided by various state and territory agencies largely through field visits and farmer interviews. The participating agencies were: NSW Agriculture, Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment, QLD Department of Natural Resources, Primary Industries and Resources SA, Agriculture WA, Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment and NT Department of Lands Planning and Environment.

The maps of land use across Australia use a simplified 5km grid cell, whilst the State and territory maps utilise the 1km grid cell size of the 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2. All tabular data was determined from the 1km grided product.

The data presented (unless indicated) reflects 1996/97 statistics from a range of sources with particular use of the 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2 and the Australian Bureau of Statistics' agricultural census data, AgStats.

Those establishments with only a small contribution to overall agricultural production are excluded from the agricultural census. Since 1993/94 all establishments with an estimated value of agricultural operations (EVAO) of $5000 or more are included. This EVAO was previously $22500 or more. The value of agricultural production is expressed in terms of gross value. Gross value is defines as the value placed on recorded production at wholesale prices realised in principal markets.

The reliability maps are relevant only to the agricultural land uses assigned to the 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2 data using the SPREAD method (Walker & Mallawaarachchi 1998) which provides two measures of reliability:

1. Affinity - the difference between a cell's NDVI profile and the NDVI profile of the control site used to assign the land use. A value of 0 indicates a perfect match and 1 indicates maximum dissimilarity.
2. Pass number - the number of iterations required to allocate the agricultural land use to a cell. The smaller the value, the more reliable the land use allocation.

For simplicity, the affinities and pass numbers have been categorised into 3 classes.

Reliability	affinities
Most reliable :	affinity values of 0.000 to 0.030 and those areas manually allocated
Medium reliability :	affinity values of 0.030 to 0.047
Least reliable :	affinity values of 0.047 to 0.483

Reliability	pass number
Most reliable :	1 pass and those areas manually allocated
Medium reliability :	2 or 3 passes
Least reliable :	4 to 19 passes

Factors such as the representativeness of the control site used (affected by distance, geographical region, homogeneity etc) and the number of different agricultural land uses within a region to be solved affect the affinity value and pass number obtained for an individual pixel.

What is the area of different land uses in NSW?

Table: Area of land uses in NSW

Land Use Description	Total Extent ('000 ha)	Total Extent (%)
No Data	3.4	0
Nature conservation	5262.1	6.6
Other protected areas including indigenous uses	3.2	0
Minimal use	5421.8	6.8
Livestock grazing	54656	68.3
Forestry	3207.2	4
Dryland agriculture	9190.3	11.5
Irrigated agriculture	955.3	1.2
Built environment	514.3	.6
Waterbodies not elsewhere classified	838.2	1

Where are the agricultural lands in Australia?

Link to a description or map of agricultural lands in Australia.

What sources of information were used?

Australian Bureau of Statistics (1999) AgStats: Small Area of Agricultural Commodity Data 1996-97

Australian Bureau of Statistics (1999b) Australian Demographic Statistics. (3101.0 June 1999)

Australian Land Use Management Classification

Bureau of Rural Sciences (1997) National Forest Inventory, Australian Tenure 1:250 000

Bureau of Rural Sciences (1999) 1995 Land Cover 1:25 000

Bureau of Rural Sciences (1999) National Forest Inventory, Native Forest and Plantations of Australia 1:250 000

Division of National Mapping (1980) Atlas of Australian Resources, Third Series, Volume 1 Soils and Land Use. Canberra

Environment Australia (1998) Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database - CAPAD97

Environment Australia (2000) Collaborative Australian Protected Areas Database - CAPAD99

National Land and Water Resources Audit (2001) 1996/97 Land Use of Australia, Version 2

Randall, L (2001). Coordination of land use mapping of key implementation areas. Final Report BRR6. National Land and Water Resources Audit, Canberra.

Stewart, J.B., Smart, R.V., Barry, S.C. and Veitch, S.M. (2001)1996/97 Land Use of Australia - Final Report for Project BRR5 , National Land and Water Resources Audit, Canberra.

Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment (1999) Tasmanian Rural and Fishing Industry Profiles

Walcott, J.J., Zuo, H. and Rath, H. (2001) Recent changes in agricultural land use in Australia. Proceedings of the 10th Australian Agronomy Conference, Hobart, 2001

Walker, P.A. and Mallawaarachchi, T. (1998) Disaggregating agricultural statistics using NOAA-AVHRR NDVI. Remote Sensing and the Environment 63, 112-125

Further information

• Link to the map maker to view national land use information
• Link to the Australian Natural Resources Data Library to download national and regional scale land use data
• NSW Agriculture
• Exit to New South Wales Department of Land and Water Conservation
• Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
• Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
• Australian Bureau of Statistics
• Geoscience Australia
• Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics

• ANRA home
  • Map maker
  • Natural resource topics
  • Data Library

• Natural resource topics
  • Agriculture
  • Coasts
  • Dryland Salinity
  • Invasive species
  • Irrigation
  • Land
  • Natural resource economics
  • People
  • Rangelands
  • Soils
  • Vegetation and biodiversity
  • Water
  • Publications

• Land
  • Catchment condition
  • Landuse change

• Landuse 1996/1997
  • New South Wales
  • Victoria
  • Queensland
  • South Australia
  • Western Australia
  • Tasmania
  • Northern Territory
  • Australian Capital Territory

• • Nutrients
  • Landscape
    • New South Wales
    • Victoria
    • Queensland
    • South Australia
    • Western Australia
    • Tasmania
    • Northern Territory
    • Australian Capital Territory