Ground Cover Reference Sites Database of New South Wales

The Ground Cover Reference Sites Database of New South Wales has been collected by Office of Environment and Heritage, New South Wales as part of the Ground Cover Monitoring for Australia project. The data is being used to calibrate, validate and improve vegetation fractional cover products derived from remote sensing, in particular the satellite sensors MODIS and Landsat. The data is being used to improve the national fractional vegetation cover product of Guerschman et al. (2009) derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). This algorithm enables national, monthly identification of ground cover separating the photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic components by applying a linear unmixing methodology for spectral reflectance every 8 days as 16-day composites. For confidence in its ground cover estimates, the results were verified in the field at selected sites across Australia to allow more extensive calibration, validation and verification of accuracy of the remote sensing method. The Ground Cover Reference Sites Database represents the results of the field validation of remotely determined cover measurements by observing cover along point intersects with a total of 300 points (or 200 points with crops). It also has additional observations and measures such as landscape features, fire evidence, erosion evidence, biotic disturbance evidence, biomass estimates, basal area measurements, soil features and dominant vegetation species, as well as site photographs. The Ground Cover Reference Sites Database focuses on sites in extensive grazing systems of the rangelands and, to a lesser extent, in the mixed farming or intensive land use zone. Field validation aims at obtaining a wide spatial coverage of sites, with limited site revisits for temporal coverage.

Tags: Acacia brachystachya, Aristida ramosa, Aristida sp., Asteraceae sp., Astrebla lappacea, Astrebla sp., Atriplex pseudocampanulata, Atriplex sp., Austrodanthonia sp., Austrostipa scabra, Bassia paradoxa, Brassica rapa, Brassica sp., Callitris glaucophylla, Calytrix sp., Casuarina sp., Centaurea melitensis, Chenopodium nitrariaceum, Chloris sp., Danthonia eriantha, Dichanthium sericeum, Disturbance, Dodonaea viscosa, Enneapogon avenaceus, Enneapogon nigricans, Enneapogon sp., Enteropogon acicularis, Eragrostis cilianensis, Eragrostis kennedyae, Eragrostis lacunaria, Eragrostis parviflora, Erosion, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, Eucalyptus conica, Eucalyptus crebra, Eucalyptus largiflorens, Eucalyptus melanophloia, Flora, Geology, Hordeum leporinum, Land Cover, Land Use, Landscape, Leiocarpa brevicompta, Lithology, Maireana aphylla, Maireana pyramidata, Maireana schistocarpa, Maireana sedifolia, Medicago polymorpha, Neobassia proceriflora, Panicum decompositum, Panicum effusum, Panicum sp., Poaceae sp., Prostanthera sp., Ptilotus leucocoma, Pycnosorus chrysanthes, Salsola tragus, Sclerolaena birchii, Sclerolaena brachyptera, Sclerolaena decurrens, Sclerolaena divaricata, Sclerolaena eriacantha, Sclerolaena lanicuspis, Sclerolaena limbata, Sclerolaena muricata, Sclerolaena obliquicuspis, Sclerolaena sp., Sclerolaena tricuspis, Senna phyllodinea, Sinapis arvensis, Soil, Species Presence/Abundance, Sporobolus actinocladus, Sporobolus caroli, Sporobolus mitchellii, Stipa sp., Trigonella suavissima, Triraphis mollis, Vachellia farnesiana, Vegetation Cover, Vegetation Structure, Vittadinia sp., Xanthium spinosum
Organization: Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery