[talk-au] Vic State Forest Boundary Files

[Little Maps]

Hi all, a brief update on Vic State Forest datasets... My suggestion that the VicMap Crown Land Tenure database was "a mess" probably had anyone who knows about GIS data structures rolling their eyes at my ignorance. It didn't make any sense to me either, so I spent a couple more days studying metadata files and joining multiple VicMap datasets (which we have a waiver to use) to try to find the elusive State Forests boundaries.

The upshot is that either: (1) they definitely aren't there, or (2) I'm missing something blatantly obvious, because after trial after trial, I couldn't find them - other than the coarse outlines in the VicMap Lite data. (Any suggestions on things to try are most welcome).

Ironically, the best approximation I could get to the real boundaries (as shown in the new PLM25 dataset, which we don't yet have a waiver to use) was to subtract all of the crown reserves in the Crown Lands Tenure database from all of the crown lands in the larger Property database (which contains every land parcel in the state). In theory, this should have deleted all of the state forests from the results, but they remained, plus a lot of flotsam and jetsom. Essentially you can find the State Forests boundaries through a process of elimination, but not by explicit filtering it seems.

With a few extra steps, it is possible to get a good approximation of a statewide map of State Forests, with extremely accurate parcel boundaries on each, but no-one would ever want to go through the process. So, yes, it is possible to extract accurate parcel boundaries for most State Forests from the VicMap dataset, but it's a real pain. The newer Public Land Management PLM 25 delivers everything in one simple step, and is a lot easier and more confidence-inspiring to work with. Cheers Ian