Innovations in the national atlas

Australia’s account of innovations in the third series describes the second series of the Atlas of Australian Resources (1963–1977) as 30 large colour map sheets, each with a small black-and-white commentary booklet, available unfolded, mounted for a loose-leaf binder, or folded for a boxed set. In comparing land-use mapping, the account explains that the second series’ 1970 map chiefly distinguished the dominant grazing livestock and intensive versus extensive production, using a calculation it describes as complicated to identify areas where cropping was economically predominant or co-dominant. Both that map and its third-series successor used detailed statistics for small areas.