L. K. Hazlewood · 1976
This Australian account describes preliminary plans for the third series of the Atlas of Australian Resources, before its volumes appeared. The National Atlas Advisory Committee, first convened in February 1971, consulted specialists and surveyed purchasers, geography teachers and geographers about content and use. It favoured smaller sheets accommodating a national map at 1:10,000,000, with sectional maps at 1:5,000,000 where greater detail was needed. The account anticipated that a more flexible allocation of sheets to topics would double the map material. Subjects under consideration included settlement history, land potential, the marine environment and detailed mapping of the ten cities with populations above 100,000. Questionnaire responses strongly supported retaining explanatory commentaries; the committee envisaged shorter texts interleaved with maps on sheets of the same size. Publication was provisionally planned over seven or eight years, with the first topics possibly appearing in 1975. These are planning proposals, not descriptions of the completed third-series volumes.
Unknown · 1980
This Australian compilation report describes plans and preliminary work for the third series of the Atlas of Australian Resources as of September 1976. The National Atlas Advisory Committee’s December 1973 report recommended continued serial publication, with each topic normally combining several sheets of maps and commentary. It proposed sheets approximately 430 × 560 mm, accommodating a national map at 1:10,000,000, and about 45 topics to be produced within ten years and released within eight years of publication beginning. Topic selection drew on a user questionnaire and six specialist working groups. The report attributes production delays partly to government restrictions on staffing and expenditure, while completion of the second series remained the priority. Preliminary work included detailed topic planning, assessment of source data, recruitment of specialist assistance, base maps, page layouts and standard symbols. Population mapping was expected to depend on detailed 1976 census results, most of which were not anticipated until 1978.
Unknown · 1986
This Australian submission describes innovations in the third series of the Atlas of Australian Resources, then in production. It explains the move from separate map sheets and booklets to thin bound volumes combining maps, commentary, photographs and diagrams. Ten volumes were planned, with major maps also issued separately to make them available sooner. The account regards changes in content as especially important: Volume 1, Soils and Land Use, simplifies soil classifications for land-management interpretation and uses livestock-density classes, crop symbols and LANDSAT imagery to depict land use. Volume 3, Agriculture, largely reuses the 1975/76 statistical basis and spatial interpretation of the land-use map to present agriculture in the mid-1970s. For Volume 2, Population, the submission credits computer-assisted mapping of census data for 11 major cities with improving accuracy and reducing production time. Work in progress included a geological map distinguishing areas covered by Cainozoic deposits and a satellite-supported map of present vegetation; the vegetation project also planned a multipurpose mapping database.
