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Foliage Projective Cover - Sentinel-2, DETSI Algorithm, QLD Coverage

For some time, Remote Sensing Sciences, has produced Foliage Projective Cover (FPC) using a model applied to Landsat surface reflectance imagery, calibrated by field observations. An updated model was developed which relates field measurements of FPC to 2-year time series of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) computed from Landsat seasonal surface reflectance composites. The model is intended to be applied to Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, given their similar spectral characteristics. However, due to insufficient field data coincident with the Sentinel-2 satellite program, the model was fitted on Landsat imagery using a significantly expanded, national set of field data than was used for the previous Landsat FPC model fitting. The FPC model relates the field measured green fraction of mid- and over-storey foliage cover to the minimum value of NDVI calculated from 2-years of Landsat seasonal surface reflectance composites. NDVI is a standard vegetation index used in remote sensing which is highly correlated with vegetation photosynthesis. The model is then applied to analogous Sentinel-2 seasonal surface reflectance composites to produce an FPC image at Sentinel-2 spatial resolution (i.e. 10 m) using the radiometric relationships established between Sentinel-2 and Landsat in Flood (2017). This is intended to represent the FPC for that 2-year period rather than any single date, hence the date range in the dataset file name. The dataset is generally expected to provide a reasonable estimate of the range of FPC values for any given stand of woody vegetation, but it is expected there will be over- and under-estimation of absolute FPC values for any specific location (i.e. pixel) due to a range of factors. The FPC model is sensitive to fluctuations in vegetation greenness, leading to anomalies such as high FPC on irrigated pastures or locations with very green herbaceous or grass understoreys. A given pixel in the FPC image, represents the predicted FPC in the season with the least green/driest vegetation cover over the 2-year period assumed to be that with the least influence of seasonally variable herbaceous vegetation and grasses on the more seasonally stable woody FPC estimates. The two-year period was used partly because it represents a period relative to tree growth but was also constrained due to the limited availability of imagery in the early Sentinel-2 time series. The FPC dataset is constrained by the woody vegetation extent dataset for the FPC year.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Creation)
2018-01-01
Date (Publication)
2023-11-06
Date (Revision)
2025-12-10
Edition
1.0

Publisher

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

Author

Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Queensland Government
41 Boggo Road, Dutton Park, 4102, Queensland, Australia
Dutton Park
Queensland
4102
Australia
Website
https://www.tern.org.au/

Purpose
Foliage projective cover (FPC) is a metric of vegetation cover used in many Australian vegetation classification frameworks. The Statewide Land and Trees Study (SLATS) uses the FPC metric derived from Sentinel-2 imagery to provide broad estimates about the range of tree and shrub densities represented in woody vegetation across Queensland.
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.
Status
Completed

Point of contact

Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Queensland Government - Data Enquiries, Earth Observation and Social Sciences (EOSS) ()
41 Boggo Road, Dutton Park, 4102, Queensland, Australia
41 Boggo Road
Dutton Park
Queensland
4102
Australia

Spatial resolution

Spatial resolution
10
Topic category
  • Environment
  • Imagery base maps earth cover

Extent

Description
State of Queensland.
N
S
E
W


Temporal extent

Time period
2018-01-01 2022-12-31
Maintenance and update frequency
Annually
GCMD Science Keywords
  • VEGETATION COVER
ANZSRC Fields of Research
  • ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
TERN Platform Vocabulary
  • Sentinel-2A
  • Sentinel-2B
TERN Instrument Vocabulary
  • MSI
TERN Parameter Vocabulary
  • vegetation area fraction
  • Unitless
QUDT Units of Measure
  • Unitless
GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
  • 30 meters - < 100 meters
GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
  • Annual
Keywords (Discipline)
  • foliage projective cover

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
Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.

Resource constraints

Classification
Unclassified

Distribution Information

Distribution format

Distributor

Distributor

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly, Queensland, 4068, Australia
Indooroopilly
Queensland
4068
Australia
OnLine resource
Cloud Optimised GeoTIFFs - Foliage Projective Cover

OnLine resource
foliage_projective_cover

Foliage Projective Cover

OnLine resource
Landscape Data Visualiser - Foliage Projective Cover

OnLine resource
ro-crate-metadata.json

Data quality info

Hierarchy level
Dataset
Other
<br>The data set is generally expected to provide a reasonable estimate of the range of FPC values for any given stand of woody vegetation, but it is expected there will be over- and under-estimation of absolute FPC values for any specific location (i.e. pixel) due to a range of factors. Error is also expected in areas of consistent cloud cover and urban areas, due to interference from the cloud mask.</br> <br>The FPC model is sensitive to fluctuations in vegetation greenness, leading to anomalies such as high FPC in locations with consistently green herbaceous or grass understoreys over the 2-year period.</br> <br>The FPC is reset to 'no-data' for pixels which are non-woody in the Woody Extent data set. Woody patches smaller than the Woody Extent Minimum Mapping Unit (0.5&nbsp;ha) will have FPC='No Data'. Likewise, nonwoody patches smaller than the MMU may have a non-zero predicted FPC.</br> <br></br>

Report

Result

Statement
The model Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) is 9.1 FPC points.

Resource lineage

Statement
<br>The FPC model was developed using: The national data set of historic star-transect field data (Muir et al, 2011) and two-year (eight-season) time series of Landsat seasonal surface reflectance composites.</br> <br>Landsat imagery was downloaded from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) as radiance and converted to surface reflectance using Flood, 2013a, followed by seasonal surface reflectance using Flood, 2013b.</br> <br>The FPC model was fit between the field measured green fraction of mid- and over-storey foliage cover and the minimum value of NDVI calculated from 2-years of Landsat seasonal surface reflectance composites. This is expected to represent the driest pixel over the two-year period, where there is the least influence of green understorey on the surface reflectance.</br> <br>Sentinel-2 seasonal surface reflectance mosaics were computed from the Sentinel-2 source data using the same procedures as for Landsat (Flood, 2013a; 2013b).</br> <br>The FPC model was applied to a 2-year (8 season) time series of Sentinel-2 seasonal surface reflectance composites to produce an FPC image.</br> <br>Finally, the 2018 Woody Extent data set was used to reset FPC values in non-woody regions to 'no data' to eliminate over-estimation of FPC in green pastures, cropping regions and other nonwoody landscapes.</br>
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Title
Flood N. (2013a). An operational scheme for deriving standardised surface reflectance from Landsat TM/ETM+ and SPOT HRG imagery for Eastern Australia. Remote Sensing, 5(1): 83-109
Website
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs5010083

Method documentation

Title
Flood N. (2013b). Seasonal composite Landsat TM/ETM+ images using the medoid (a multi-dimensional median). Remote Sensing, 5(12): 6481-6500
Website
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs5126481

Method documentation

Title
Armston J.D., Denham R.J., Danaher T.J., Scarth P.F. and Moffiet T. (2008). Prediction and validation of foliage projective cover from Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-7 ETM+ imagery for Queensland, Australia. Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, 3: 033540-28
Website
https://doi.org/10.1117/1.3216031

Method documentation

Title
Muir J., Schmidt M., Tindall D., Trevithick R., Scarth P., and Stewart J. (2011). Field measurement of fractional ground cover: a technical handbook supporting ground cover monitoring for Australia. Technical report, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, Canberra, ACT
Website
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236022381_Field_measurement_of_fractional_ground_cover

Method documentation

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier
EPSG/EPSG:3577

Reference system type
Geodetic Geographic 2D

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/c65ad708-e270-431a-bb5b-13f1a4ec13db

Title
TERN GeoNetwork UUID

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/c65ad708-e270-431a-bb5b-13f1a4ec13db

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Date info (Creation)
2023-10-09T00:00:00.000000+00:00
Date info (Revision)
2025-12-10T09:45:48.424403+00:00

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
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
GCMD Science Keywords
VEGETATION COVER

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Associated resources

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