Ecological Communities of

National Environmental Significance

This is an updated release of the generalised EPBC Act Listed threatened ecological communities spatial information. The GIS data is available in vector format within an ESRI Geodatabase and as a series of ASCII grids.

Background

The Ecological Communities of National Environmental Significance Database contains general information about the occurrence and distribution of threatened ecological communities listed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999 (EPBC ACT).

Previously departmental information on the distribution and occurrence of EPBC listed ecological communities was contained withinthe Species Profile and Threats database (SPRAT: Threatened ecological community information can be obtained from linked recovery plans, conservation advices, policy documents and simplified location maps. Lists of threatened ecological communities that occur in a location can be generated through the Protected Matters Search Tool ( available on the Department of the Environment and Energy’s webpage.

Distribution models of threatened ecological communities have been developed to allow the Department to respond to the frequent requests from natural resource managers seeking spatial information in a suitable format for regional scale planning.

The release of the generalised data version of the ECNES (Ecological Communities of National Environmental Significance)database has been developed to allow the public to access distribution information of Australia’s threatened ecological communities. The data have been generalised at 100m,with the exception of those ecological communities occurring within Western Australia. Distributions of ecological communities that occur within Western Australia have been generalised at 1km at the request of the Department of Parks and Wildlife, Western Australia.

The product consists of:

  • GIS data in vectorformat within an ESRI file geodatabase. The data can be imported into a geographic information system. A look-up table has been included to improve efficiency
  • A zipped folder of ASCII grids. The ASCII files are named asc_XXX.asc where XXX refers to the community ID number (COM_ID)
  • An index (in CSV format) containing important information and a link to the SPRAT profile of each ecological community displayed in the product.

The development of this ECNES product is in line with the Commonwealth’s principle of open data access and is being promoted under the Australian Government’s environmental approval bilateral agreements with the States and Territories.

Ecological Community Distribution Mapping

The data have been derived from maps created by spatial ecologists within the Department of the Environment and Energy. These maps have been created using ecological data, research information, observation records, vegetation mapping and modelling software with national-scale environmental data. They are predictive models of the occurrence of a given ecological community and shouldbe considered as indicative rather than a definitive assessment of presence or absence. They represent a starting point for further investigation rather than the outcome of a comprehensive scientific assessment.

The generalised distributions provide an indication of the spatial certainty of presence by classifying into one of two presence categories: likely to occurormay occur.

The ‘likely to occur’presence category is an approximate boundary of the current extent of the ecological community. The boundaries have often been delineated using State and Federal vegetation mapping polygons. However, ecological communities are defined by the interactions of species and physical characteristics, and it can be difficult to develop an absolute indication of where a community does or does not occur. The uncertainty in the ‘likely to occur’ boundary reflects the Department’s need to balance accurate and useful information for natural resource managers, and a legally and scientifically defensible method of protecting important ecological communities where they occur.

The ‘may occur’presence categoryis typically the outer perimeter of where the ecological community could be encountered, although the community may still be found outside the boundary. Generally, the ‘may occur’ category encompasses the range of ecological and biophysical characteristics that have been used to define the community in the listing advice. The ‘may occur’ boundary often reflects other natural boundaries, like vegetation groups and geological features.

Spatial data has no legal status and must always defer to the Conservation Advice.It is unsafe to use the spatial data only to decide if an ecological community of national environmental significance occurs at a particular location.

Generalisation

The generalised distributions are a compilation of many different datasets, mapped at multiple scales over varying timeframes using different collection and classification methods.The accuracy of the data will usually vary more than +/-100m. The generalised distributions are indicative products only and are not intended for use at a local level.

With the exception of ecological communities in Western Australia, the distribution of all ecological communities within ECNES have been generalised to 0.001 decimal degrees(~100m). Distributions within Western Australia have been generalised to 0.01 decimal degrees (~1km) at the request of the Western Australia Department of Parks and Wildlife.

For more information,please email .

About the data

The community distributions have been collated into a single feature class. The feature class can be joined with the Look-uptable using the common “COM_ID” field. The index spreadsheet (CSV) and look up tablecontains additional information and links to the community profiles on SPRAT.

The file geodatabase and index spreadsheethave been zipped into an archive file. The ASCII files are available as a separate archive file. The archive filesare available from the Department of the Environment and Energy’s data portal ‘Find Environmental Data’ (

Updates

The underlying Ecological Communities of National Environmental Significance database is continuously updated as the list of ecological communities on the schedules of the EPBC Act is amended or more information becomes available. It is anticipated that the generalised data product derived from the database will be updated annually. Members of the public are encouraged to provide feedback to .

Copyright

© Copyright Commonwealth of Australia, 2016.


Ecological Communities of National Environmental SignificanceVersion 1.0 is licensed by the Commonwealth of Australia for use under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Australia licence with the exception of the Coat of Arms of the Commonwealth of Australia, the logo of the agency responsible for publishing the report, content supplied by third parties, and any images depicting people. For licence conditions see:

This dataset should be attributed as Ecological Communities of National Environmental Significance Version 1.0, Commonwealth of Australia 2016.

The Commonwealth of Australia has made all reasonable efforts to identify content supplied by third parties using the following format ‘© Copyright, [name of third party] ’

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