NSW Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program State-wide Historic Forest Canopy Loss and Recovery - 1998 to 2020

This dataset contains spatial layers describing Forest Loss and Recovery from 1998-2020 in NSW. For this dataset product and the processing of metrics, aspects of canopy loss and disturbances in the forest estate were investigated. Measures of canopy loss and recovery are seen as one of the multiple indicators of forest health. This is related to agents or pressures that affect the capacity of native forests and commercial operations to maintain normal ecosystem functions and sustainably provide productive capacity.
To attribute disturbances, as a driver of change, a Multiple Lines of Evidence (MLE) approach was used that leveraged available spatial datasets. This allowed for a project-wide disturbance and disturbance context layer to be generated. This information can be interpreted back against forest cover extent change outputs, in particular the differences between individual years, to identify the areas of change and the likely reasons why. Therefore, landscape trends in forest loss can be potentially assigned or at the very least investigated.
The time taken, in terms of years, for areas to recover from losses in forest cover extent can has also been determined. This process identifies the time taken for a patch of forest to return to a 20% canopy cover threshold, and other characteristics such as the forest type and likely disturbance or loss event.
Base cover extent grids used are from the NSW State-wide Historic Forest Cover Extent – 1995 to 2020 product. These have been processed through a series of land use and vegetation type exclusion masking and a through a fuzzy-logic based certainty analysis to reflect a forest cover extent coverage for NSW that is reflective of past and current coverage.
Read more about the project on the Natural Resources Commission website:
https://www.nrc.nsw.gov.au/fmip-baselines-ecosystem-health-projectfe1
This dataset supersedes "NSW Forest Monitoring and Improvement Program RFA Historic Forest Loss and Recovery – 1998 to 2019".

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.
The dataset is owned by NSW Natural Resources Commission. Spatial Vision established the method and initial application of creation of historic baselines.

Purpose
This dataset has been created for the NSW Natural Resources Commission to create a historic baseline and understand trends of forest drivers of change as loss and recovery in NSW.

Data Processing
This dataset contains spatial layers in raster format (geotiff).