The ‘bare surfaces’ group of classes doesn’t fill the thematic space available – for example there is no bare rock category available below the alpine environment unless it’s a landslide or along a lake or river. We’re considering the merit if merging ‘Alpine Gravel and Rock’ with ‘River and Lakeshore Gravel and Rock’ into a new generic ‘Gravel and Rock’ class. What do you think?

Collaborating agencies: Please leave your views as comments below, along with your name/organisation.

Our compilation to date has maintained an absolute respect for earlier mapping by not removing any existing boundaries, but inserting new boundaries along new or corrected land cover edges. As we do this, segments of former polygons have their attributes corrected so they often become described identically to their former neighbours. The old boundaries between neighbouring polygons therefore ceases to delineate any real difference between one side and the other so we’re contemplating a pre-release dissolve of these now-spurious boundaries to ‘clean up’ the database. What do you think?