SEED makes it possible for every dataset to become something more

All datasets on SEED are freely available and open for use. With appropriate attribution, you can download, share and apply the data to support your work, research or projects.

Any dataset on SEED could:

• become your next business idea
• inform government policy
• help your child win the next (or perhaps the one after the next) Nobel Prize
• contribute to solving a scientific problem
• be the start of a community project
• inspire a creative masterpiece
• support solutions to environmental challenges
• or help you win an argument with the satisfaction that comes from having the evidence to back it up.

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is an international non-profit organisation that established Creative Commons licenses in 2002 to help people legally share knowledge, creativity, and culture.

Some of the world’s most recognised platforms and projects use Creative Commons licenses, including YouTube, Wikipedia, Vimeo and Flickr, and, of course, SEED. 

SEED uses the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).
This license means you have the right to distribute, merge, reanalyse, adapt, and build upon the data, even for commercial purposes and in any format, so long as attribution is given to the data producer or publisher.
 

Why it’s important

As stated by the authors of Licensing Best Practices for Sharing Scientific Data:
“Open data is central to accelerating scientific progress because it allows researchers everywhere to freely access, verify, combine, and build upon existing data without legal or technical barriers, dramatically increasing the speed, scale, and collaboration of discovery.”

Creative Commons licenses help remove legal barriers to using data, making collaboration and innovation easier. Open access to data has supported scientific advances, informed responses to global challenges such as Climate Change and COVID-19, and improved weather forecasting, making travel safer for everyone. 
 

Why is it available on SEED?

SEED was developed with and for the community, providing a single place to access, explore, share, contribute to and use NSW environmental data. By making trusted environmental information easier to discover and understand, SEED empowers everyone—from community members and researchers to industry and government—to make informed decisions and ensure the environment is considered in planning, policy and everyday actions.

By applying a Creative Commons licence to datasets on SEED, users can confidently access, share and reuse environmental data for a wide range of purposes, provided the appropriate attribution is given. This supports the NSW Government Open Data Policy, which promotes making government data both accessible and usable through licensing arrangements that facilitate its release and reuse.

SEED is free to access while delivering significant economic, environmental and social value. By improving access to trusted environmental information, it supports better planning and decision-making, reduces duplication across government, and enables innovation through open data. Its return on public investment is realised through faster, more informed decisions and better outcomes for communities and the environment.

How do I use the license?

The requirements are simple:

1. Provide attribution to the data producer or publisher.
2. Do not apply legal or technical restrictions that prevent others from exercising the same licence rights.

SEED makes attribution easy through the built-in citation function available on all datasets. 
SEED is also updating dataset citations to align with current best practices for sharing and citing scientific data.

How to cite a dataset

To access a dataset citation:

1. Open a dataset page on SEED.
2. Scroll to the Citations and Views section near the bottom of the page.
3. Select With this citation.
4. A pop-up window will appear containing the recommended citation text.
5. Copy and use the citation wherever you reference the dataset.

While you’re there, you can let us know how you are using the data or check out how others have. 

Most people look at bushland and see a wall of green. SEED helps you see past that.

For environmental scientist and UTS lecturer Dr Charlotte Simpson-Young, understanding a patch of bushland starts not on the ground, but on a map. When Charlotte began her PhD in plant ecology, she faced a practical challenge shared by ecologists, planners, and researchers across NSW: environmental data existed, but it wasn't easy to explore. Today, she uses SEED's spatial map to locate Sydney's native plant communities, and she's teaching the next generation of landscape architects to do the same.

Charlotte was studying the impact of urbanisation on Sydney Sandstone Dry Sclerophyll Forest and Woodlands – specifically, which plant species thrive under urban pressure, which struggle, and how well revegetation projects are working. To do that, she needed to locate patches of the right vegetation type, scattered over national parks and urban bushland reserves across Northern Sydney.

The data she needed existed in published scientific reports. But printed reports can't show you where to go. You can't zoom into a suburb, scan a reserve, or compare locations across a region. Without a way to visualise and explore that data spatially, scoping her research would have meant months of manual searching with no guarantee of finding the right sites.

"You can't just use a report to explore and figure out where you want to go…it doesn't work like that." 

Dr Charlotte Simpson-Young, Plant Ecologist and Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Finding the forest before you visit it

Charlotte turned to SEED's spatial map, specifically, the Vegetation Map – Sydney Metro Area layer. She spent hours exploring it online, identifying candidate sites before leaving her desk. The map enabled her to scan Northern Sydney, identify and pinpoint vegetation communities, and shortlist locations to investigate. What would have taken months of fieldwork was compressed into a research planning process she could complete from her desk.

"It gave me all my sites to go visit," she says. "I narrowed down the locations I'd visit using the mapping, and I ended up with forty-five sites across Northern Sydney."

Ground truthing: where data meets reality

Charlotte is clear-eyed about the limits of any environmental dataset. Once she had a shortlist of locations from SEED, she would head out to ground truth them, checking whether what was mapped actually matched what was on the ground. The map got her to the right suburb, the right reserve, and the right section of bushland. The finer details, though, are where nature's complexity takes over.

"Natural phenomena are never actually that easy to categorise," she explains. "If the map said a reserve had my vegetation type, it would always have it – it was accurate to that degree. But when you got there, you'd narrow it down further yourself."

In fact, one of Charlotte's key PhD findings emerged directly from this tension between mapped data and lived observation: some urban bushland technically classified as Sydney Sandstone Dry Sclerophyll Forest had quietly shifted into something different: a wetter, transitional community due to the subtle effects of urbanisation. The map reflects a snapshot, but the bush keeps evolving.

New ways of working: SEED in the design classroom

Perhaps the most unexpected dimension of Charlotte's SEED story is where it has taken the platform next — from her PhD, into classrooms of landscape architecture students.

Charlotte now lectures botany and ecology to design students at UTS, and SEED has become a core part of how she teaches. Both subjects require students to spend time in an urban bushland reserve. Students draw it, learn its species, and understand its structure. Before they go, she points them to SEED. 

This is an emerging use case for the SEED portal. These aren’t environmental science students; they're designers - visual, creative, and often new to scientific ways of understanding the natural world. It shows what’s possible when environmental data is open and accessible. 

"We encourage them to use SEED to figure out which plant community they're dealing with," Charlotte says. "It gets them most of the way there."

The Sydney Metro vegetation layer does more than name what's there. It connects plant communities to underlying geology, soil type, water, aspect, and slope. The environmental variables that explain why specific combinations of species grow in a particular place. For students who might otherwise see bushland as a backdrop, it becomes a starting point for thinking about the land they’re designing for. 

"It's a unique combination of plant species that supports a unique combination of fauna. It's not all just a massive green."

The hope is that these future landscape architects carry that understanding into their careers, turning to SEED when they receive a project brief.

"They can go on to SEED, look at the physical location of their project, see what remnant vegetation is around there or what should have been there, and use that to inform a design," Charlotte says.

Some already are. Architecture graduates from the program have reported back that they now recommend native planting schemes to clients after learning about the local ecology.

"SEED is a jumping off point. It gets you to the right place and helps you understand what you are seeing when you get there. For landscape architects, there's a lot of potential in having an easy tool to look at what vegetation should be there."

Dr Charlotte Simpson-Young, Environmental Scientist and Lecturer, UTS

But for Charlotte, the value of SEED extends beyond her own research and the classroom. It's about closing the gap between people and the natural world they move through every day. Most people, she says, don't realise how deeply nature is woven into how we live. In our art, our storytelling, and our built environment. That's exactly where a platform like SEED comes in. 

"My ultimate goal is to try and fix plant blindness, and SEED helps me do that."

Dr Charlotte Simpson-Young, Plant Ecologist and Lecturer, UTS

It functions not just as a research tool, but as a way to help more people understand what they're looking at when they step into the bush.

Helping people prepare for climate change begins with making trusted open data easier to understand and apply locally.

Making climate science more accessible

Climate research, environmental modelling and projections play a critical role in helping communities prepare for a changing climate. However, for many people, this information can feel intimidating because it is often complex, technical and difficult to interpret.

As Samantha Stratton, a Project Officer working within Strategic Policy, Science & Engagement, DCCEEW, explains:

“The main challenge was translating complex climate data into content that people could understand and apply. Research reports alone aren’t accessible to most users, and we needed a platform that could bridge the gap between science and real‑world decision‑making.”

Using the SEED program, Samantha and her team created the Future Climate and Adaptation hub to make climate science more accessible, engaging and locally relevant for a wider range of users across New South Wales.

Rather than simply hosting complex datasets, SEED enabled the team to combine climate data, interactive tools and localised insights in one place. This allows users to explore climate information in a way that feels personalised, practical and relevant to their needs.

“My goal was to make the information understandable so people could actually use it. Because if no one understands it, they won’t know how valuable this data can really be”, explains Samantha. 

By transforming complex science into accessible information, SEED helps support informed decision-making and climate adaptation across NSW.
 

Helping users engage with climate data at every level 

Beyond the data exploration page on SEED, users can access research insights, climate maps, graphs and supporting content tailored to different levels of knowledge and experience, whether they're just beginning their climate data journey or are seasoned practitioners.

The goal is simple: help more people understand and engage with climate information. Once users understand climate data, they are more likely to apply it in planning, decision-making and adaptation activities.

“One of the greatest values of SEED is its open data - it’s tested, verified and accessible. No matter someone’s level of experience, they can engage with it confidently knowing it’s backed by rigorous science”, says Samantha. 
 

The Future Climate and Adaptation hub supports users through multiple pathways, including:

• Plain-language explanations that make complex climate science easier to understand
• Interactive maps that allow users to visualise projected climate impacts at a local level
• Downloadable datasets for more detailed analysis
• Clear pathways for deeper engagement, enabling users to build their knowledge and confidence over time
   

Bringing climate adaptation closer to home

One of the key strengths of the Future Climate and Adaptation hub on SEED is its ability to make climate adaptation feel locally relevant rather than a distant or abstract issue.

Through interactive maps and projections, users can explore how climate impacts may differ across regions and communities throughout NSW and focus on the information most applicable to them. 

The maps provide climate projections at a four-kilometre resolution, helping users understand how changes in climate variables, such as temperature and rainfall, may affect their local area.

This level of detail helps communities, businesses and decision-makers connect climate information to their own circumstances and plan for future risks and opportunities.

The hub also draws on projections from the NSW and Australian Regional Climate Modelling (NARCliM) project. These projections help local and state governments, researchers, and communities explore long-term climate trends and adaptation options with greater confidence.
 

From understanding to action 

Since launching in November 2025, the Future Climate and Adaptation hub on SEED has recorded more than 5,000 views, with users returning to explore maps, insights and downloadable datasets.

“We released sea level rise information last year, and they’re still being downloaded even now,” says Samantha. 

Beyond page views, the team also monitors how users interact with the hub, including movement between content and datasets, file downloads and time spent exploring interactive maps. These insights help the team better understand how users are engaging with and applying the information available through the hub.

“SEED offers access to high-quality, verified climate information that’s available to everyone. Making that information openly accessible helps to start important conversations, build understanding and support communities adapting to a changing climate.”  Samantha Stratton, Project Officer, DCCEEW.
 

Supporting long-term climate adaptation

As climate impacts continue to evolve, the Future Climate and Adaptation hub on SEED will continue helping communities, researchers, businesses and decision-makers access trusted climate information.
Through the hub, users can build climate literacy, access information relevant to their circumstances and make more informed decisions about future climate risks and adaptation opportunities.

"I've seen firsthand how this information, our policies and our programs help communities, species and landscapes. In a changing world, helping people access and understand trusted information is incredibly important."

Through SEED, Samantha and her team can continue expanding access to trusted climate information, helping more people understand the impacts of a changing climate and supporting informed action across NSW.