Inland water ecosystem condition variables and indicators at 100 m resolution for continental Australia: 2010 to 2023

This data collection comprises ecosystem condition variables, ecosystem reference states for variables, and ecosystem condition indicators for the calendar years from 2010 to 2023 in two groupings to representing: 1) running waters (lotic ecosystems) and 2) standing waters (lentic ecosystems). Lotic ecosystems (rivers and streams) are represented by six ecosystem functional groups (EFGs) from the river and streams biome (F1) of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Global Ecosystem Typology) (IUCN GET; Keith et al., 2022). The vector river and stream segment data for lotic ecosystems are derived from GeoFabric version 3.3 and refinements determined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Lentic ecosystems (lakes and wetlands) are represented by 11 EFGs across three biomes, namely lakes (F2), artificial wetlands (F3), and palustrine wetlands (FT1) of the IUCN-GET, as mapped for Australia at 100 m resolution by Macfarlane et al. (2025).

Data are provided in two spatial formats: vector data and relational tabular data in geodatabases, and raster data as single band GeoTiff layers. Vector data apply to river and stream segments, and raster data apply to standing waterbodies. Intermediate data derived during the process of developing the condition variables and indicators are also provided for potential other application use cases (note that these intermediate data are provided in GDA1994 Australian Albers).

Some condition variables and indicators are defined annually from 2010 to 2023, utilising data from the Landsat archive Collection 3.0 managed by Geoscience Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, 2021) derivative products: Water Observations version 2.0.0 (Mueller et al., 2016; Geoscience Australia, 2022) and Fractional Cover version 4.0.0 (Lymburner, 2021). Others are derived from the three 5-year periods of national land use mapping (ABARES, 2024), and some are static (e.g., degree of river regulation; Linke et al., 2019, Lehner et al., 2022).

The spatial reference system is GDA2020 Australian Albers (EPSG:9473).