The Ground Cover Reference Sites Database of Northern Territory has been collected by Department of Natural Resources, Environment, The Arts and Sport, Northern Territory 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.

The desert ecology plot network, located in the Simpson Desert in central Australia, aims to track long-term shifts in biodiversity and ecological processes in relation to key drivers, both intrinsic to the resource pulse dynamics and due to human disturbance. These drivers include unpredictable rainfall and droughts, fire, feral predators and grazing.

The Ground Cover Reference Sites Database of Western Australia has been collected by Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia 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.

The SWATT is an initiative developed collaboratively by TERN's Australian Transect Network and the Department of Parks and Wildlife, Western Australia (DPaW). The SWATT is one of four national ecological transects or plot networks that traverse key Australian terrestrial ecosystems. The principal purpose of the transects is to measure selected biodiversity attributes along with biophysical processes, that will inform key ecosystem science questions and assist with the development and validation of ecosystem models. Transects will enable benchmarking and subsequent monitoring of trends in ecological condition in response to continental scale biophysical processes such as climate change. The SWATT is located in the south west of Western Australian extending for over 1,200km from Walpole on the south coast to just beyond the former pastoral lease of Lorna Glen and into the Little Sandy Desert. The SWATT incorporates the internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot that is the Southwest Botanical Province (Myers et al. 2000, Hopper P & Gioia 2004), a national biodiversity hotspot (Central and Eastern Avon Wheatbelt) and the evolutionary significant species rich Southwest Interzone (Hopper 1979, Gibson et al. 2010) which includes the globally significant Great Western Woodlands (GWW) (Watson et al. 2009). The SWATT also intercepts another two national significant phytogeographic transitional zone, the Triodia-Acacia line (Beard 1975) and the Menzies line (Butt et al. 1977).