A similar basis has been adopted in land capability classifications in other countries, with classes graded from very suitable to highly unsuitable for agriculture, and mapped at varying levels of detail. In the case of the well-known classifications prepared by the Department of Lands and Forests in Ontario and the United States Soil Conservation Service (USSCS) it has been soil characteristics that have been especially prominent. In the case of the former, land is classified according to the costs of developing it for commercial agriculture. For the USSCS the classification focuses on the land’s susceptibility to soil erosion, but tends to ignore general features of productivity. In Australia, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has produced land classifications since the 1940s, using a land-systems approach in which areas are defined ‘within which certain predictable combinations of surface forms and their associated soils and vegetation are likely to be found’ (Cooke and Doornkamp, 1990, pp. 20-1).