First Nations land-sea mask?

General
1

I’m wondering whether anyone has built a land-sea mask that includes First Nations locations? Basically an ACCESS version of the AIATSIS map:

Thanks!!

2

Hey @kial I’m not exactly clear on what your use case is but:

  • if you are working with gridded data
  • are using python / xarray
  • and have shape files

Then the regionmask package can help - create masks of geospatial regions — regionmask 0.13.0 documentation

As far as shape files go I’m not aware of their open availability, licensing, etc but a quick search shows some discussion of related topics over on Add Aboriginal language group layer · Issue #7 · AtlasOfLivingAustralia/mdba-hub · GitHub

Not sure how helpful this is?

3

Hi @kial - just checking what you want to do with a modified land-sea mask? The land-sea mask should be binary and valued 0 (not land) or 1 (land). The associated land fraction file gives the % of a grid box that is land. The model only needs to know what is land and what isn’t, and along coastlines what the fraction of land is if not 0% or 100%.

The land-sea mask ancillary file influences other ancillaries that are built (if you are using a fixed set of ancils and want to modify the land-sea mask, you will need to rebuild all your ancils).

The land-sea mask is important for, among other things, the calculation of surface energy fluxes within the grid box, and - if running coupled - the coupling between the atmosphere and ocean models. It’s possible to modify (I spent a large portion of last year adding unresolved inland lakes to the ACCESS land-sea mask), but there are some things you need to be careful about.

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