Reviews: Atlas of Australian Resources, Second Series: Landforms, Land Use, Temperatures & Climate

Summary

T.L.C. Griffin reviews the 1973 Landforms, Land Use, Temperatures and Climate sheets of the Atlas of Australian Resources, Second Series, issued with explanatory booklets. He judges them more informative and stylistically consistent than their First Series predecessors. On Landforms, he praises the use of visual levels to express morphostructural classification but finds Landform Types less visually clear. Land Use retains a refined dominant-use classification, explained in its commentary, that distinguishes variation within the wheat-sheep belt. Griffin criticizes grazing colours for obscuring co-dominant grain symbols; he finds that the produce-value index counterbalances areal bias while exaggerating the extent of high-value crops. Temperatures supplies more information through fewer maps, while Climate replaces a single regional map with fifteen, covering rainfall, temperature, evapotranspiration, climatic indices, heat discomfort, Köppen regions and airmass prevalence. Griffin concludes that the sheets maintain the series' greater finesse and provide more pertinent detail.