Australian Land Fraction and Derived Masks

Full description

This dataset includes Geotiff raster files representing land fractions and derived binary masks indicating various land and marine categories of Australia, excluding Cocos, Christmas, Norfolk, Macquarie, Heard and McDonald Islands, as well as Antarctica. The land fraction raster provides the proportion of land within each cell, while the masks delineate areas based on specific land and marine criteria: any land, majority land, full land, any marine, majority marine, and full marine. These data are essential for spatial analysis and environmental studies focused on coastal and marine regions.
Lineage: The dataset begins with the creation of a land fraction raster, which is derived from the 2021 Australian (AUS) boundary (https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/australian-statistical-geography-standard-asgs-edition-3/jul2021-jun2026), the 2017 GA Smartline coastline data (https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/104160), and the 2023 OpenStreetMap (OSM) coastline data (https://osmdata.openstreetmap.de/data/land-polygons.html). These sources provide comprehensive spatial data that are integrated to calculate the proportion of land for each pixel, with values ranging from 0 (entirely marine) to 1 (entirely land).

Once the land fraction raster is established, it serves as the basis for generating a series of binary masks. These masks categorize the data into specific land and marine classifications:
•\tLand_full: Pixels that are completely land (land fraction = 1).
•\tLand_majority: Pixels where land occupies more than half of the area (land fraction > 0.5).
•\tLand_any: Pixels with any proportion of land (land fraction > 0).
•\tMarine_full: Pixels that are entirely marine (land fraction = 0).
•\tMarine_majority: Pixels where marine areas predominate (land fraction ≤ 0.5).
•\tMarine_any: Pixels that are not entirely land (land fraction < 1).

The Geoscience Australia (GA) DEA Collection 3 grid was employed as the baseline for creating the spatial grid. This grid is anchored at a south-west origin point with coordinates (−6912000.0, −4416000.0) in the EPSG:3577 (GDA94 / Australian Albers) coordinate reference system. The dataset includes both 100-meter and 250-meter resolution data in GDA94 / Australian Albers (EPSG:3577), catering to the needs of different users and applications.