GEOSS Ecosystem Mapping for Australia
The physical drivers of ecosystem formation – macroclimate, lithology and landform – along with vegetation structural formations are key determinants of current ecosystem type. Each combination of these ecosystem drivers – each ‘ecological facet’ – provides a unique set of opportunities and challenges for life. <br>
Management and conservation should seek to understand and take in to account these drivers of ecosystem formation. By understanding the unique combinations of these drivers management strategies can plan for their full range of variation, and conservation efforts can ensure that unique ecosystems are not lost. Unfortunately, there is currently no Australia-wide standardized map of ecological facets at management-appropriate scales. <br>
By understanding the magnitude and distribution of unique combinations of these drivers, management strategies can plan for their full range of variation, and conservation efforts can ensure that unique ecosystems are not lost. Additionally, by improving our understanding of the past and present conditions that have given rise to current ecological facets this dataset could facilitate future predictive environmental modelling. Finally, this data could assisting biodiversity conservation, climate change impact studies and mitigation, ecosystem services assessment, and development planning <br>
Further information about the dataset can be found at <a href=" https://ternaus.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TERNSup/pages/2276130817/GEOSS+Ecosystem+Map ">GEOSS Ecosystem Map,TERN Knowledge Base </a> .
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2017-11-01
- Date (Publication)
- 2021-12-14
- Date (Revision)
- 2025-12-10
- Edition
- 1.0
Identifier
Publisher
Author
Co-author
- Website
- https://www.tern.org.au/
- Purpose
- TERN GEOSS Ecosystem Mapping for Australia aimed to map ecological facets for continental Australia, using methods modelled after similar prior mapping at continental and global scales, but with modifications for Australia. Each of the three major factors driving ecosystem formation – macroclimate, lithology and landform – were captured with one or two spatial indicators. Finally major vegetation structural formations were mapped and combined with the indicators of ecosystem formation to produce ‘ecological facets’.<br> Outcomes: The ultimate goal of this work was the production of the Ecological facets data product. These ecological facets allow for a better understanding of the current range of biophysical variation within and across Australian ecosystems. However, it is anticipated that for many applications the precursor spatial indicators will be more useful by themselves.
- Credit
- We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
- Credit
- This work was funded through TERN Landscapes. TERN is Australia’s land-based ecosystem observatory delivering data streams to enable environmental research and management (TERN, www.tern.org.au). TERN is part of Australia’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS, www.education.gov.au/national-collaborative-research-infrastructure-strategy-ncris).
- Status
- Completed
Point of contact
Point of contact
- Topic category
-
- Environment
Extent
- Description
- Australia
))
Temporal extent
- Time period
- 1976-01-01 2016-01-01
- Title
- GEOSS Ecosystem Mapping (TERN Wiki Page)
- Website
-
GEOSS Ecosystem Mapping (TERN Wiki Page)
Related documentation
- Title
- Clarke, K. and Lewis, M. (2017). GEOSS Ecosystem Mapping for Australia. TERN AusCover. https://www.tern.org.au/tern_landscape_auscover__geoss_ecosystem_mapping_for_australia__report_final/
- Website
-
Clarke, K. and Lewis, M. (2017). GEOSS Ecosystem Mapping for Australia. TERN AusCover. https://www.tern.org.au/tern_landscape_auscover__geoss_ecosystem_mapping_for_australia__report_final/
Related documentation
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Not planned
- GCMD Science Keywords
- ANZSRC Fields of Research
- TERN Parameter Vocabulary
- QUDT Units of Measure
- GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
- GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
- Keywords (Discipline)
-
- surficial lithology
- weathering intensity
- land surface form
- topographic moisture potential
- vegetation structural formation
- macroclimate class
Resource constraints
- Use limitation
- The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- File name
- 88x31.png
- File description
- CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
- File type
- png
- Title
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
- CC-BY
- Edition
- 4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- TERN services are provided on an "as-is" and "as available" basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
- Other constraints
- Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.
Resource constraints
- Classification
- Unclassified
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
Distributor
Distributor
- OnLine resource
- GEOSS Ecological Facets dataset
- OnLine resource
-
geoss_map_v2
GEOSS Ecosystem Mapping for Australia
- OnLine resource
- ro-crate-metadata.json
Data quality info
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
- Other
- The GEOSS Ecosystem dataset is a continental dataset of ecological facets – unique combinations of ecosystem drivers and vegetation structural formations – was produced by combining the spatial indicators of macroclimate, lithology, landform, and vegetation structural formations.
Reference System Information
- Reference system identifier
- EPSG/EPSG:4326
- Reference system type
- Geodetic Geographic 2D
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/5c427d8b-e5c4-43f3-9a20-71cbd6d5c6c6
- Title
- TERN GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Point of contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Dataset
- Metadata linkage
-
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/5c427d8b-e5c4-43f3-9a20-71cbd6d5c6c6
Point-of-truth metadata URL
- Date info (Creation)
- 2017-11-01T00:00:00.000000+00:00
- Date info (Revision)
- 2025-12-10T10:04:18.809507+00:00
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
- Edition
- 1
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
- Edition
- 1.0
Metadata standard
- Title
- ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
- Edition
- 1.0
- Title
- Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
- Date (published)
- 2021
- Edition
- 1.0
Identifier
Overviews
Spatial extent
Provided by
