These data describe the Australia-wide, monthly fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation absorbed by vegetation (fPAR) derived from Advance Very High Resolution Radiometer data spanning July 1981 to Oct 2011. FPAR is linearly related to fractional foliage cover. Here fPAR is split into that of persistent vegetation and of recurrent vegetation, which represent non-deciduous perennial vegetation and annual, ephemeral and deciduous vegetation, respectively. Data have been processed using the "invariant cover triangle" method to remove the majority of errors introduced by sensor calibration and change-over effects.

This product has been superseded and will not be processed from early 2023. Please find the updated version 3 of this product at https://portal.tern.org.au/metadata/23885. An estimate of persistent green cover per season. This is intended to estimate the portion of vegetation that does not completely senesce within a year, which primarily consists of woody vegetation (trees and shrubs), although there are exceptions where non-woody cover remains green all year round. It is derived by fitting a multi-iteration minimum weighted smoothing spline through the green fraction of the seasonal fractional cover (dim) time series.

An estimate of persistent green cover per season. This is intended to estimate the portion of vegetation that does not completely senesce within a year, which primarily consists of woody vegetation (trees and shrubs), although there are exceptions where non-woody cover remains green all year round. It is derived by fitting a multi-iteration minimum weighted smoothing spline through the green fraction of the seasonal fractional cover (dp1) time series. A single band image is produced: persistent green vegetation cover (in percent). The no data value is 255.

The MODIS Land Condition Index (LCI) is an index of total vegetation cover (green and non-photosynthetic vegetation ), and so is also an index of soil exposure. The LCI is a normalised difference index based on MODIS bands in the mid-infrared portion of the spectrum. The index is produced from 500-m MODIS nadir BRDF adjusted reflectance (NBAR) data. As with all products derived from passive remote sensing imagery, this product represents the world as seen from above. Therefore, the cover recorded by this product represent what would be observed from a birds-eye-view. Therefore, dense canopy may prevent observation of significant soil exposure.

The Landsat-derived fractional cover layer gives the amount of bare ground, green vegetation, and dead vegetation for each pixel on a specific date. The landscape of NSW undergoes a large variation in greenness throughout the seasonal and drought cycles. Information about the variation in greenness can be useful for a variety of mapping and planning tasks. Areas of green vegetation are important for native species habitat and human recreation activities. Green areas in the landscape are often related to the availability of near surface water or recent inundation, such as bogs, swamps and mires. These green areas are important for native plants and animals as locations of food and water in dry times. The green fraction has been analysed for a sequence of images to show how long an area stays green following a greening event, such as grass growth in response to rainfall. The map of green accumulation for NSW was created from Landsat images from 1988 to 2012. Areas exhibiting the highest values are the areas of NSW that respond with high green cover for a long period after a greening event.

The data set is a statewide annual composite of fire scars (burnt area) derived from all available Landsat 5, 7 and 8 images acquired over the period January to December using time series change detection. Fire scars are automatically detected and mapped using dense time series of Landsat imagery acquired over the period 1987 - present. In addition, from 2013, products have undergone significant quality assessment and manual editing. The automated Landsat fire scar map products covering the period 1987-2012 were validated using a Landsat-derived data set of over 500,000 random points sampling the spatial and temporal variability. On average, over 80% of fire scars captured in Landsat imagery have been correctly mapped with less than 30% false fire rate. These error rates are significantly reduced in the edited 2013-2016 fire scar data sets, although this has not been quantified. <br> For the 2016 annual fire scar composite, the manual editing stage incorporated Landsat and Sentinel 2A imagery (resampled to match Landsat spatial resolution), allowing for increased cloud-free ground observations, and an associated reduction in the number of missed fires (not quantified). Sentinel 2A images were primarily used to map fire scars that were otherwise undetectable in the Landsat sequence due to cloud cover/Landsat revisit time. Additionally, Landsat-7 SLC-Off imagery (affected by striping) was excluded from the 2016 annual composite. It is expected that these modifications should result in improved mapping accuracy for the 2016 period.<br> A new fire scar detection algorithm has been developed, with a new edited product implemented in 2021.

RSMA measures change in the relative contributions of photosynthetic vegetation (PV, or GV green vegetation), non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV) and soil reflectance compared to a baseline date. These spectral changes correspond to changes in fractional cover relative to the baseline date. Full details on the RSMA method are presented in Okin (2007). One of the key advantages of the RSMA, its insensitivity to changes in soil spectra, is a result of the fact that it does not require us to know the soil reflectance profile for a region. This strength is also the cause of a major weakness in RSMA. Since the measure is relative to a baseline date, and the absolute cover levels for every pixel are unknown at the baseline, the RSMA does not convey the absolute cover levels at any other point in time. However, if the absolute cover levels are known at any point in time, it is theoretically possible to convert the RSMA to absolute relative spectral mixture analysis (ARSMA).<br> As with all products derived from passive remote sensing imagery, this product represents the world as seen from above. Therefore, the cover recorded by this product represent what would be observed from a bird's-eye-view. Therefore, dense canopy may prevent observation of significant soil exposure.

Three maps are available: 1) foliage projective cover, 2) forest extent, attributed with the foliage projective cover and 3) accuracy of the extent maps, which also acts as masks of forest and other wooded lands. Each pixel in map 1 estimates the fraction of the ground covered by green foliage. Each pixel in map 2 shows two pieces of information. The first is a classification of whether the vegetation is forest or not. The pixels classified as forest are attributed with the second piece of information: the foliage projective cover. Each pixel in map 3 is a class that provides information on the classification accuracies of the woody extent. These maps are derived from Landsat.

Foliage Projective Cover (FPC) is the percentage of ground area occupied by the vertical projection of foliage. The Remote Sensing Centre FPC mapping is based on regression models applied to dry season (May to October) Landsat-5 TM, Landsat-7 ETM+ and Landsat-8 OLI imagery for the period 1988-2014. An annual woody spectral index image is created for each year using a multiple regression model trained from field data collected mostly over the period 1996-1999. A robust regression of the time series of the annual woody spectral index is then performed. The estimated foliage projective cover is the prediction at the date of the selected dry season image for 2014. Where this deviates significantly from the woody spectral index for that date, further tests are undertaken before this estimate is accepted. In some cases, the final estimate is the woody spectral index value rather than the robust regression prediction. The product is further masked to remove areas classified as non-woody.

This dataset is modelled national pasture productivity. It describes the dynamics in grassland/pasture Gross Primary Production (GPP), Net Primary Production (NPP) and Carbon mass. GPP indicates total rate of carbon fixed through photosynthesis, in units gC/m2/day. It is the GPP of grasses only and so describes the production of grasslands and pastures. GPP is estimated separately for C3 and for C3 grasses using the Diffuse model (Donohue et al. 2014, see publication links). NPP is the net rate of carbon fixed through photosynthesis (GPP minus plant respiration) for grasses, in units of gC/m2/day. Grass carbon mass is the above-ground mass of grasslands and pastures, estimated using the CSP model. These are estimated using the unpublished CSP model (v2) for both live and senesced mass in units t/ha. Biomass is typically approximated as double the carbon mass. Inputs include MODIS MOD13Q1, minimum and maximum air temperature, elevation data and rainfall as described in the lineage section.