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Seasonal fractional cover - Landsat, JRSRP algorithm Version 3.0, Australia coverage

The seasonal fractional cover product shows representative values for the proportion of bare, green and non-green cover across a season. It is a spatially explicit raster product, which predicts vegetation cover at medium resolution (30 m per-pixel) for each 3-month calendar season. The green and non-green fractions may include a mix of woody and non-woody vegetation. A 3 band (byte) image is produced: band 1 – bare ground fraction (in percent), band 2 - green vegetation fraction (in percent), band 3 – non-green vegetation fraction (in percent). The no data value is 255.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Creation)
2022-03-28
Date (Publication)
2022-05-03
Date (Revision)
2014-07-14
Edition
1.0

Publisher

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Author

Joint Remote Sensing Research Program
Chamberlain Building (35), Campbell Road, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia
St Lucia
QLD
4072
Australia

Rights holder

Joint Remote Sensing Research Program
Chamberlain Building (35), Campbell Road, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia
St Lucia
QLD
4072
Australia
Website
https://www.tern.org.au/

Purpose
This product captures variability in fractional cover at seasonal (i.e. three-monthly) time scales, forming a consistent time series from 1987 - present. It is useful for investigating inter-annual changes in vegetation cover and analysing regional comparisons. For applications that focus on non-woody vegetation, the ground cover product, derived from fractional cover, may be more suitable. For applications investigating rapid change during a season, monthly composite or single-date (available on request) fractional cover products may be more appropriate. This product is based upon the JRSRP Fractional Cover 3.0 algorithm.
Credit
We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Credit
This dataset was produced by the Joint Remote Sensing Research Program using data sourced from US Geological Survey.
Status
On going

Point of contact

Department of Environment and Science, Queensland Government - van den Berg, Deanna ()
Ecosciences Precinct, 41 Boggo Road, Dutton Park, QLD, 4102, Australia
Ecosciences Precinct, 41 Boggo Road
Dutton Park
QLD
4102
Australia

Spatial resolution

Spatial resolution
30
Topic category
  • Environment
  • Imagery base maps earth cover

Extent

Description
Australia
N
S
E
W


Temporal extent

Time period
1987-12-01
Title
Flood, N., Danaher, T., Gill, T. and Gillingham, S. (2013) An Operational Scheme for Deriving Standardised Surface Reflectance from Landsat TM/ETM+ and SPOT HRG Imagery for Eastern Australia. Remote Sens. 2013, 5(1), 83-109. doi:10.3390/rs5010083
Website
Flood, N., Danaher, T., Gill, T. and Gillingham, S. (2013) An Operational Scheme for Deriving Standardised Surface Reflectance from Landsat TM/ETM+ and SPOT HRG Imagery for Eastern Australia. Remote Sens. 2013, 5(1), 83-109. doi:10.3390/rs5010083

Related documentation

Title
Zhu, Z. and Woodcock, C.E. (2012). Object-based cloud and cloud shadow detection in Landsat imagery Remote Sensing of Environment 118. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2011.10.028
Website
Zhu, Z. and Woodcock, C.E. (2012). Object-based cloud and cloud shadow detection in Landsat imagery Remote Sensing of Environment 118. doi:10.1016/j.rse.2011.10.028

Related documentation

Title
Muir, J. et al (2011), Field measurement of fractional ground cover: supporting ground cover monitoring for Australia. ABARES. Canberra
Website
Muir, J. et al (2011), Field measurement of fractional ground cover: supporting ground cover monitoring for Australia. ABARES. Canberra

Related documentation

Title
Flood, N. (2013) Seasonal Composite Landsat TM/ETM+ Images Using the Medoid (a Multi-dimensional Median). Remote Sens. 2013, 5(12), 6481-6500
Website
Flood, N. (2013) Seasonal Composite Landsat TM/ETM+ Images Using the Medoid (a Multi-dimensional Median). Remote Sens. 2013, 5(12), 6481-6500

Related documentation

Maintenance and update frequency
Quarterly
GCMD Science Keywords
  • LAND USE/LAND COVER
  • VEGETATION COVER
  • SOILS
ANZSRC Fields of Research
  • ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT
  • Environmental Monitoring
  • ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS
TERN Platform Vocabulary
  • LANDSAT-5
  • LANDSAT-7
  • LANDSAT-8
  • LANDSAT-9
TERN Instrument Vocabulary
  • TM
  • ETM+
  • OLI
TERN Parameter Vocabulary
  • bare soil fraction
  • Percent
  • photosynthetic vegetation fraction
  • Percent
  • non-photosynthetic vegetation fraction
  • Percent
GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
  • 30 meters - < 100 meters
GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
  • Weekly - < Monthly

Resource constraints

Use limitation
The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
File name
88x31.png
File description
CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
File type
png
Linkage
https://w3id.org/tern/static/cc-by/88x31.png

Title
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
Alternate title
CC-BY
Edition
4.0
Website
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints
TERN services are provided on an “as-is” and “as available” basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
Other constraints
It is not recommended that these data sets be used at scales more detailed than 1:100,000.

Resource constraints

Classification
Unclassified
Supplemental Information
A 3 band (byte) image is produced: band 1 – bare ground fraction (bare ground, rock, disturbed) in percent, band 2 - green vegetation fraction in percent, band 3 – non-green vegetation fraction (litter, dead leaf and branches) in percent. The no data value is 255.

Distribution Information

Distributor

Distributor

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097
OnLine resource
Differences between Fractional Cover version 2 and version 3

Distribution Information

Distributor

Distributor

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd, Indooroopilly, QLD, Australia, 4068
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
OnLine resource
Seasonal Fractional Cover via HTTP

OnLine resource
Vegmachine Timeseries Viewer

OnLine resource
GitLab Code for Fractional Cover version 3

Data quality info

Hierarchy level
Dataset
Other
1) The input imagery was processed to level L1T by the USGS. Geodetic accuracy of the product depends on the image quality and the accuracy, number, and distribution of the ground control points. 2) The fractional cover model was compared to samples drawn from approximately 4000 field reference sites.

Report

Result

Statement
1) The USGS aims to provide image-to-image registration with an accuracy of 12 m. Refer to the L8 Data Users Handbook for more detail. 2) The fractional cover model predicts the vegetation cover fractions with MAE/wMAPE/RMSE of: bare - 6.9%/34.9%/14.5% PV - 4.6%/37.9%/10.6% NPV - 9.8%/25.2%/16.9%.

Resource lineage

Statement
Summary of processing: Landsat surface reflectance data > multiple single-date fractional cover datasets > medoid calculation for seasonal composite of fractional cover <br />Further details are provided in the Methods section.
Hierarchy level
Dataset

Process step

Description
Image Pre-Processing: All input Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI imagery was downloaded from the USGS EarthExplorer website as level L1T imagery. Images which the EarthExplorer site rated as having greater than 80% cloud cover were not downloaded. The imagery has been corrected for atmospheric effects, and bi-directional reflectance and topographic effects, using the methods detailed by Flood et al (2013). The result is surface reflectance standardised to a fixed viewing and illumination geometry. Cloud, cloud shadow and snow have been masked out using the Fmask automatic cloud mask algorithm. Topographic shadowing has been masked using the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission DEM at 30 m resolution. Water has been masked out using the methods outlines in Danaher & Collett (2006).

Process step

Description
Fractional Cover Model (Version 3.0): A multilayer perceptron (MLP) model is used to estimate percentage cover in three fractions – bare ground, photosynthetic vegetation (PV) and non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV) from surface reflectance, for every image captured within the season. The MLP model was trained with Tensorflow using Landsat TM, ETM+ and OLI surface reflectance and a collection of approximately 4000 field observations of overstorey and ground cover. The field observations covered a wide variety of vegetation, soil and climate types across Australia, and were collected between 1997 and 2018 following the procedure outlined in Muir et al (2011). The model was assessed to predict the vegetation cover fractions with MAE/wMAPE/RMSE of: bare - 6.9%/34.9%/14.5% PV - 4.6%/37.9%/10.6% NPV - 9.8%/25.2%/16.9%.

Process step

Description
Seasonal Compositing: The method of compositing used selection of representative pixels through the determination of the medoid (multi-dimensional equivalent of the median) of three months (a season) of fractional cover imagery. The medoid is the point which minimises the total distance between the selected point and all other points. Thus the selected point is “in the middle” of the set of points. The value selected is a specific data point and not an averaged or blended value. It is robust against extreme values, inherently avoiding the selection of outliers, such as occurs when cloud or cloud shadow goes undetected. At least three pixels from the time-series of imagery for the season must be available. Unfortunately, due to the high level of cloud cover in some areas, often three cloud free pixels are not available, resulting in data gaps in the seasonal fractional cover image. For further details on this method see Flood (2013).

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier
EPSG/EPSG:3577

Reference system type
Geodetic Geographic 2D

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/0997cb3c-e2e2-45be-ac82-f5e13d24331c

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Point of contact

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Type of resource

Resource scope
Dataset
Metadata linkage
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/0997cb3c-e2e2-45be-ac82-f5e13d24331c

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Date info (Creation)
2022-03-28T00:00:00
Date info (Revision)
2022-11-21T04:41:20

Metadata standard

Title
ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
Edition
1

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
Edition
1.0

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
Edition
1.0
Title
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
Date (published)
2021
Edition
1.0

Identifier

Code
10.5281/zenodo.5652221
Website
https://github.com/ternaustralia/TERN-ISO19115/releases/tag/v1.0

 
 

Overviews

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

ANZSRC Fields of Research
ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT Environmental Monitoring
GCMD Science Keywords
LAND USE/LAND COVER SOILS VEGETATION COVER

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Access to the portal
Read here the full details and access to the data.

Associated resources

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