This dataset indicates the presence and persistence of water across New South Wales between 1988 and 2012. Water is one of the world’s most important resources as it’s critical for human consumption, agriculture, the persistence of flora and fauna species and other ecosystem services. Information about the spatial distribution and prevalence of water is necessary for a range of business, modelling, monitoring, risk assessment, and conservation activities. For example, one of the necessary steps in the NSW State-wide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS), which monitors vegetation change and is used in the production of vegetation maps, involves removing non-vegetative features such as water bodies through water masking. Water count The water count product is based on water index and water masks for NSW (Danaher & Collett 2006), and represents the proportion of observations with water present across the Landsat time series as a fraction of total number of possible observations in the 25yr period (1 Jan 1988 to 31 Dec 2012). The product has two bands where band 1 is the number of times water was present across the time series, and band 2 is the count of unobscured (i.e. non-null) input pixels, or number of total observations for that pixel. Cloud, cloud-shadow, steep slopes and topographic shadow can obscure the ability to count water presence. Water Prevalence The water prevalence product is extracted from the water count product and provides a measure of the relative persistence of water in the landscape (e.g. from always present to rarely and never present). There are 12 classes representing the percentage of time a pixel has had water present out of the total number of observations for that pixel (i.e Band 1/Band 2 of the water count product). Water prevalence mapping provides information for multiple, wide-reaching applications. For example, distance to locations of persistent water bodies can be modelled as a contributing indicator of potential biodiversity refugia. Files align with Landsat paths and rows (see https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/nli/landsat/landsat-tools), with files for water count denoted 'dd7' and water prevalence 'ddh'.

The Australian cosmic-ray soil moisture monitoring network was first established in 2010 to provide Australian and global researchers with spatially distributed intermediate scale soil moisture observations. A cosmic-ray sensor (CRS) provides continuous estimates of soil moisture over an area of approximately 30 hectares by measuring naturally generated fast neutrons (energy 10–1000 eV) that are produced by cosmic rays passing through the Earth’s atmosphere. The neutron intensity above the land surface is inversely correlated with soil moisture as it responds to the hydrogen contained in the soil and to a lesser degree to plant and soil carbon compounds. The cosmic-ray technique is also passive, non-contact, and is largely insensitive to bulk density, surface roughness, the physical state of water, and soil texture. The scale of CRS measurements fills the void between point scale sensor measurements and large scale satellite observations. The depth of measurements varies with the moisture content of the soil but is typically between 10-30 cm. The depth of observations is reported as ‘effective depth’. <br> The CosmOz network is expanding as new sensors are added over time. The initial network was funded by CSIRO Land and Water but more recently TERN has funded work to maintain the network add new sensors and deliver data more efficiently. The standard CRS installation includes; a cosmic-ray neutron tube, a rain gauge (2m high), temperature and humidity sensors, and an atmospheric pressure sensor. Measures of all parameters are reported at an hourly interval. Each CRS requires an in-field calibration across the footprint of measurements to convert neutron counts to soil moisture content. The calibration includes collection of soil samples for bulk density, lattice water content and soil organic carbon.<br> The Australia CosmOz network consists of <a href="https://cosmoz.csiro.au/sites">19 stations</a>. The extent of the network and available data can be seen at the CosmOz network web page: <a href="https://cosmoz.csiro.au/">https://cosmoz.csiro.au</a>. The data is also accessible from the <a href="https://landscapes-cosmoz-api.tern.org.au/rest/doc">TERN Cosmoz REST API</a>.<br> The calibration and correction procedures used by the network are described by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/2013WR015138">Hawdon et al. 2014 </a>.