About Topographic Maps

Paper topographic maps

Geoscience Australia produces paper topographic maps at scales of 1:100 000, 1:250 000 and 1:1 million. For more than 40 years, these topographic maps, or NATMAPs as they are commonly known, have provided Australians with the information they need to navigate and explore this vast continent.

In conjunction with the Australian Army, Geoscience Australia produces more than 2000 different topographic map titles. All of these maps are available through Geoscience Australia, which also distributes the Department of Defence's 1:50 000 scale topographic map series for northern Australia.

General reference products

Geoscience Australia's general reference maps provide a complete look at Australia in one map. They show similar features to the topographic maps with less detail. These maps range in scale from 1:2.5 million (wall size) down to 1:20 million (A4 size).

Geoscience Australia's atlas products provide access to large collections of maps and spatial data through easy to use, self-contained CD-ROM products and information on Australia's human and natural environments in printed form.

Digital topographic maps

Geoscience Australia's commitment to seeking the opinions of customers has resulted in the identification of a growing market demand for digital versions of its paper map products. Digital Maps are just that, digital versions of the map. They are an image of the map and not the digital data that the maps are produced from.

In 1996 AUSLIG (now Geoscience Australia) released its first digital map product, RASTER-250K. Since then the demand and expectation of digital maps has grown. The technological foundations and applications of the digital map products is still changing.

Where once a simple raster image was the standard, now the images have locational information embedded in them so that coordinates can be determined for the features in the image. Once just being able to have a library of maps on CD was great; now they need to integrate with GPS for the recreational and professional user and provide backdrops in geographical information systems for professional applications. With current developments in image formats the future may hold the opportunity for Geoscience Australia maps to be provided as vector images, with coordinates and an ability to select which features to display.