TERN Symposium 2011

1. AusCover Facility Presentation by: Alex Held – Facility Director

2. Purpose of Facility Production and delivery of nationally consistent long‐time series of satellite‐based biophysical map products and next generation remote sensing research data that is validated for Australian conditions.

3. Key Questions being Addressed • How, in space and time, have key environmental variables changed over the period of satellite image archives for Australia? • Can we measure at regional scales the relative benefits/impacts of legislated environmental management programs on Australia's major land and coastal ecosystems? • How accurate are each of the AusCover data sets, and what image and ground-based measurements are necessary to enable them to be used to assess natural and human induced changes or management actions in the environment?

4. Our plan for community engagement Operate as Regional Nodes (7), which include partnerships with local ecosystem science and natural resources management bodies. Established an “AusCover Users Reference Group” with representatives from major federal and state research agencies and NRM state agencies Run regular technical workshops, hosted at all regional nodes Operate a dynamic website and data-access portal for AusCover Set up a citizen-science portal, linked to the international Group on Earth Observation “GEOWiki Portal”

5. Fostering Stronger Federal and State Linkages Work closely with key Commonwealth government operational remote sensing agencies Bureau of Meteorology - Melbourne Node co-Lead Geosciences Australia – Canberra Node co-Lead State agency involvement in many of the regional AusCover Nodes QDERM NSW DECC WA Landgate SA DENR Federal-, State agency and Academia involvement in AusCover Advisory Group

6. UQ iVEC Data Fabric NCI CSIRO VPAC BoM Online Source: http://www.aarnet.edu.au Coming soon Accessing AusCover datasets and products

9. Metadata and technical support documents

11. Sites/transects etc.

13. Sample Datasets High-Resolution, Field-based Measurements Low-Resolution, Space-based Measurements Canopy Lidar Point-Clouds Continental Dynamics in Green Cover

14. Interim Product Delivery Plans

15. Acknowledgements Bureau of Meteorology – Ian Grant RMIT – Simon Jones University of Queensland – Kasper Johannsen Charles Darwin University – Stefan Maier Adelaide University – Megan Lewis Curtin University – Merv Lynch Geoscience Australia – Medhavy Thankappan CSIRO – Tim Malthus QDERM, UNSW DCCE – Christian Witte, Peter Scarth WA Landgate University of Technology Sydney – Alfredo Huete

16. Facility Contact Details Alex Held – Director and Rowena Smith – Facility Coordinator CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research GPO Box 3023 Canberra, ACT 2601 Australia Tel.: 61-2-6246 5630 Fax: 61-2-6246 5988 Email: alex.held@csiro.au / rowena.smith@csiro.au