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Dynamic Land Cover Dataset Version 1.0
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The Dynamic Land Cover Dataset of Australia is the first nationally consistent and thematically comprehensive land cover reference for Australia.  It is the result of a collaboration between Geoscience Australia and the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics and Sciences, and provides a base-line for identifying and reporting on change and trends in vegetation cover and extent.

Land cover is the observed biophysical cover on the Earth’s surface, including native vegetation, soils, exposed rocks and water bodies as well as anthropogenic elements such as plantations, crops and built environments.  Remote sensing data recorded over a period of time allows the observation of land cover dynamics.  Different land cover types display distinct responses due to seasonal, climatic and anthropogenic drivers.  Classifying these responses provides a robust and repeatable way of characterising land cover types.  A key aspect of land cover is vegetation greenness.  The greenness of vegetation is directly related to the amount of photosynthesis occurring, and can be measured as an index such as the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI).

The Dynamic Land Cover Dataset presents land cover information for every 250m by 250m area of the country from April 2000 to April 2008. The classification scheme used to describe land cover categories in the Dynamic Land Cover Dataset conforms to the 2007 International Standards Organisation (ISO) land cover standard (19144-2).  The Dynamic Land Cover Dataset shows Australian land covers clustered into 34 ISO classes. These reflect the structural character of vegetation, ranging from cultivated and managed land covers (crops and pastures) to natural land covers such as closed forest and sparse, open grasslands. 

The source data for the Dynamic Land Cover Dataset is a time series of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra and Aqua satellites operated by NASA. The time series includes 186 snapshots of vegetation greenness for each 250m by 250m area across the continent over an 8 year period from 2000 to 2008.

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Reference Documents
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Complete information on the creation of this product can be found in
the following documents available from the Geoscience Australia website
www.ga.gov.au/earth-observation/landcover:

Please cite this dataset as 
Lymburner L., Tan P., Mueller N., Thackway R., Lewis A., Thankappan M., Randall L., Islam A., and Senarath U., (2010), 250 metre Dynamic Land Cover Dataset (1st Edition),  Geoscience Australia, Canberra.

If you wish to provide feedback or find out about future releases of the Dynamic Land Cover Dataset, please e-mail landcover@ga.gov.au

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File Formats
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The enclosed data is formatted as GeoTIFF. Four datasets are included: 

DLCDv1_Class contains the final 34 DLC classes. The dataset includes a layer file and an attribute table for use in ArcGIS. The files are as follows:

DLCDv1_Class.tif			main DLC 34 class data file
DLCDv1_Class.tif.vat.dbf		attribute table for 34 class data
DLCDv1_Class.lyr			ArcGIS layer file for 34 class data 
DLCDv1_Class.tif.aux			ArcGIS auxiliary file

trend_evi_max shows the trend in the annual maximum of the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from 2000 to 2008. The dataset includes a layer file and an attribute table for use in ArcGIS. The files are as follows:

trend_evi_max.tif			main evi max data file
trend_evi_max.tif.lyr			ArcGIS layer file for max evi trend
trend_evi_max.rrd			ArcGIS pyramid file
trend_evi_max.aux			ArcGIS auxiliary file
trend_evi_max.tif.xml			ArcGIS metadata file

trend_evi_mean shows the trend in the annual mean of the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from 2000 to 2010. The dataset includes a layer file and an attribute table for use in ArcGIS. The files are as follows:

trend_evi_mean.tif			main evi mean data file
trend_evi_mean.tif.lyr			ArcGIS layer file for mean evi trend
trend_evi_mean.rrd			ArcGIS pyramid file
trend_evi_mean.aux			ArcGIS auxiliary file
trend_evi_mean.tif.xml			ArcGIS metadata file

trend_evi_min shows the trend in the annual minimum of the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from 2000 to 2010. The dataset includes a layer file and an attribute table for use in ArcGIS. The files are as follows:

trend_evi_min.tif			main evi min data file
trend_evi_min.tif.lyr			ArcGIS layer file for min evi trend
trend_evi_min.rrd			ArcGIS pyramid file
trend_evi_min.aux			ArcGIS auxiliary file
trend_evi_min.tif.xml			ArcGIS metadata file