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Land and Soil Capability Mapping for NSW

Created 25/06/2025

Updated 22/10/2025

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This Land and Soil Capability (LSC) dataset uses the best available soils natural resource mapping across New South Wales. It provides a broad-scale, regional view as to the dominant LSC class present for over 3000 individual mapping units through the assessment of eight key soil and landscape limitations (water erosion, wind erosion, salinity, topsoil acidification, shallow soils/rockiness, soil structure decline, waterlogging and mass movement). The assessment of LSC is based on the mapping method and rule set developed by OEH (2012). It builds on the rural land capability classification and mapping undertaken for the central and eastern divisions of the state by the former Soil Conservation Service of NSW (Emery 1986) but with more emphasis on a broader range of soil and landscape properties. The mapping is based on an eight class system with values ranging between 1 and 8 which represent a decreasing capability of the land to sustain landuse. Class 1 represents land capable of sustaining most landuses including those that have a high impact on the soil (e.g., regular cultivation), whilst class 8 represents land that can only sustain very low impact landuses (e.g., nature conservation). Information about the LSC ruleset called the Land and Soil Capability Assessment Scheme: Second Approximation can be downloaded from the DPIE website or from this Resource's page in SEED. Online Maps: This dataset can be viewed using eSPADE (NSW’s soil spatial viewer), which contains a suite of soil and landscape information including soil profile data. Many of these datasets have hot-linked soil reports. An alternative viewer is the SEED Map; an ideal way to see what other natural resources datasets (e.g. vegetation) are available for this map area. Reference: Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, 2021, Land and Soil Capability Mapping for NSW, Version 4.5, NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Parramatta.

Files and APIs

Additional Info

Field Value
Title Land and Soil Capability Mapping for NSW
Language English
Licence Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/f2d03f26-b1d4-4ad9-a2b2-de9bf9dfdf90
Remote Last Updated 08/10/2025
Contact Point
NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water
?datansw@customerservice.nsw.gov.au
Reference Period 08/01/2008 - 30/01/2020
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        153.668,
        -37.507
      ],
      [
        153.668,
        -27.998
      ],
      [
        141.001,
        -27.998
      ],
      [
        141.001,
        -37.507
      ],
      [
        153.668,
        -37.507
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal DataNSW

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on DataNSW "Land and Soil Capability Mapping for NSW". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://data.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset/nsw-land-and-soil-capability-mapping-for-nsw4bc12