Biomass Plot Library - National Collation of Stem Inventory Data and Biomass Estimation, Australian Field Sites
<p>The Biomass Plot Library is a collation of stem inventory data across federal, state and local government departments, universities, private companies and other agencies. It was motivated by the need for calibration/validation data to underpin national mapping of above-ground biomass from integration of Landsat time-series, ICESat/GLAS lidar, and ALOS PALSAR bacscatter data under the auspices of the JAXA Kyoto & Carbon (K&C) Initiative (Armston et al., 2016). At the time of Version 1.0 publication 1,073,837 hugs of 839,866 trees across 1,467 species had been collated. This has resulted from 16,391 visits to 12,663 sites across most of Australia's bioregions. Data provided for each project by the various source organisation were imported to a PostGIS database in their native form and then translated to a common set of tree, plot and site level observations with explicit plot footprints where available.</p>
<p>Data can be downloaded from https://field.jrsrp.com/ by selecting the combinations Tree biomass and Site Level, Tree Biomass and Tree Level.</p>
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2016-04-14
- Date (Publication)
- 2021-12-03
- Date (Revision)
- 2025-12-11
- Edition
- 1.0
Publisher
Author
Joint Remote Sensing Research Program
Chancellors Place, St Lucia, Queensland, 4072, Australia
St Lucia
Queensland
4072
Australia
- Website
- https://www.tern.org.au/
- Purpose
- This is a national collation of tree and shrub inventory data, allometric model predictions of above and below-ground biomass for Australia, for the purpose of calibrating and validating satellite-derived products.
- 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
- <p>The following organisations contributed to the Biomass Plot Library: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO); Flinders University, South Australia; Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP); Queensland Herbarium, Department of Environment and Science (DES); Western Regeneration Pty. Ltd.; Department of the Environment, Australia; Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory; Darwin Centre for Bushfire Research; NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH); TERN Ausplots; TERN Supersite Network; University of New South Wales; University of Queensland; Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF); Forestry Tasmania; Queensland Remote Sensing Centre, DES; Department of Parks and Wildlife, Western Australia; New South Wales Forestry Corporation; Joint Remote Sensing Research Program. </p>
- Status
- Completed
Point of contact
Joint Remote Sensing Research Program - Armston, John (Senior Scientist)
Chancellors Place, St Lucia, Queensland, 4072, Australia
Chancellors Place
St Lucia
Queensland
4072
Australia
Point of contact
Joint Remote Sensing Research Program - Lucas, Richard ()
Chancellors Place, St Lucia, Queensland, 4072, Australia
Chancellors Place
St Lucia
Queensland
4072
Australia
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
- Topic category
-
- Environment
Extent
- Description
- Australia
N
S
E
W
))
Temporal extent
- Time period
- 1936-11-26 2015-10-20
- Title
- Armston, J., et al (2016). K&C Phase 4 – Status report. JAXA Kyoto & Carbon Initiative Phase 4 Science Team Meeting, 16th-18 February 2016, Tokyo, Japan.
- Website
-
Armston, J., et al (2016). K&C Phase 4 – Status report. JAXA Kyoto & Carbon Initiative Phase 4 Science Team Meeting, 16th-18 February 2016, Tokyo, Japan.
Related documentation
- Title
- Lucas, R., et al (2010). An evaluation of the ALOS PALSAR L-band backscatter - Above ground biomass relationship Queensland, Australia. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 3, 576–593.
- Website
-
Lucas, R., et al (2010). An evaluation of the ALOS PALSAR L-band backscatter - Above ground biomass relationship Queensland, Australia. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 3, 576–593.
Related documentation
- Title
- Paul, K. I., et al (2016). Testing the generality of above-ground biomass allometry across plant functional types at the continent scale. Global Change Biology
- Website
-
Paul, K. I., et al (2016). Testing the generality of above-ground biomass allometry across plant functional types at the continent scale. Global Change Biology
Related documentation
- Title
- Duncanson, L., et al, (2020). Global Aboveground Biomass Product Validation Best Practices Protocol. Version 1.0. In L. Duncanson, et al (Eds.), Best Practice Protocol for Satellite Derived Land Product Validation: WGCV/CEOS
- Website
-
Duncanson, L., et al, (2020). Global Aboveground Biomass Product Validation Best Practices Protocol. Version 1.0. In L. Duncanson, et al (Eds.), Best Practice Protocol for Satellite Derived Land Product Validation: WGCV/CEOS
Related documentation
- Title
- TERN Field Data Protocol
- Website
-
TERN Field Data Protocol
Related documentation
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Not planned
- GCMD Science Keywords
- ANZSRC Fields of Research
- TERN Parameter Vocabulary
-
- scientific name
- Unitless
- canopy height
- Metre
- stem count per tree
- Number
- stem diameter
- Centimetre
- above-ground dry standing biomass
- Kilogram
- below-ground dry biomass
- Kilogram
- above ground dry standing biomass
- Kilogram
- live stand tree basal area
- Square Metre per Hectare
- dead stand basal area
- Square Metre per Hectare
- live individual count
- Number per Hectare
- dead animal count
- Number per Hectare
- tree decay factor
- Unitless
- QUDT Units of Measure
- GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
- GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
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
- Title
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
- CC-BY
- Edition
- 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}.
- Other constraints
- Copyright 2016 JRSRP. Rights owned by the Joint Remote Sensing Research Program.
- Other constraints
- These data can be freely downloaded and used subject to the CC BY 4.0 licence. Attribution and citation is required as described at http://www.auscover.org.au/citation. We ask that you send us citations and copies of publications arising from work that use these data.
- Other constraints
- The Biomass Plot Library data is not the result of a stratified random sampling design, therefore should not be used directly for estimation of regional carbon stocks. This is especially the case for some projects that are biased towards large trees (e.g. sites established by Forestry Tasmania).
Resource constraints
- Classification
- Unclassified
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
- NetCDF
Distributor
Distributor
Distribution Information
- Distribution format
-
Distributor
Distributor
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly, Queensland, 4068, Australia
Indooroopilly
Queensland
4068
Australia
- OnLine resource
- Field Data Portal
- OnLine resource
- ro-crate-metadata.json
Data quality info
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
- Other
- <p>Site level Spatial domain - preliminary analysis indicates a relative paucity of observations in the Great Western Woodlands and Kimberley regions in Western Australia, and the savanna woodlands of Cape York in Queensland. An assessment will be presented in a forthcoming publication. Temporal domain - the majority of sites were surveyed between 1995 and 2015, which is coincident with most satellite sensor data used to support regional to global above-ground biomass mapping. Many plots are very small in size (<0.1 ha) and should be considered in methods used to link these field data with remote sensing data.</p>
Report
Result
- Statement
- <p>The relative tree level error contributions summarised over the whole dataset are as follows: 1) Allometric model development – moisture content determination for converting fresh mass into dry mass = 5.3%. 2) Allometric model development – fresh mass weighing errors = 0.2%. 3) Allometric model development – Diameter measurement of individual trees = 0.1%. 4) Allometric model development – Allometric model fit errors = 5.1%. 5) Inventory - individual diameter measurement errors = 1.1%. 6) Allometric model prediction errors = 88.2%.</p> <p>A number of site observation locations were not measured using GPS units that could achieve positional accuracy <10 m. This is generally only the case for sites last surveyed prior to 2000 and is continuously improving as sites are revisited.</p>
Resource lineage
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
Process step
- Description
- Estimations: The above-ground, below-ground and total biomass (live+dead) estimation was implemented using the generic allometric models for Australian plant functional types developed by Paul et al. (2016) and decay correction factors implemented by Lucas et al. (2010). Site level estimates of biomass error were derived through comprehensive analysis of measurement and allometric model prediction errors (Paul et al., 2016), propagating the random error (precision) associated with the development of the allometric models, all the way through to the prediction of total site biomass.
Process step
- Description
- Field Overview: <a href="https://ternaus.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/TERNSup/pages/1960772343/Field+Data+Overview" > Field Data Overview</a>
Reference System Information
- Reference system identifier
- EPSG/EPSG:4326
- Reference system type
- Geodetic Geographic 2D
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/fc4a7249-ebb2-4ada-8e06-b552bfb297a3
- Title
- TERN GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Point of contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Dataset
- Metadata linkage
-
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/fc4a7249-ebb2-4ada-8e06-b552bfb297a3
Point-of-truth metadata URL
- Date info (Creation)
- 2016-04-14T00:00:00.000000+00:00
- Date info (Revision)
- 2025-12-11T22:36:13.345121+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
Overviews
Spatial extent
N
S
E
W
Provided by
Associated resources
Not available