The stand condition of river red gums, black box and coolibah have been identified as objectives to measure the progress towards achieving outcomes of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) commissioned a spatial stand condition assessment tool of these trees in 2014. The tool defined the extent of these communities by using a predictive model based on existing vegetation mapping and an analysis of satellite images.
The assessment tool involves a combination of quantitative ground surveys, remote sensing and modelling using machine learning. The ground surveys record the percentage of live leaf area, plant area index and crown extent. These parameters have been identified as being reliable and objective indicators of stand condition in floodplain forests.
The assessment tool was backdated to 2009, and then updated every year up to 2016 using Landsat 8 imagery. The assessment was not completed for 2011 and 2013 due to corrupt Landsat 7 imagery and flooding preventing completion of fieldwork.
The MDBA has made the assessment tool related resources publicly available as part of its commitment to the Australian Government policy on public data and information. Due to the large file size, the following files are not uploaded to www.data.gov.au but are available on request from gis@mdba.gov.au.
• Stand Condition Assessment tool - Stand Condition Assessment tool software (.exe; 299MB)
• Input Data - six epochs of 2009, 2010, 2012-2016 and Landsat time composite images (floating point raster image)
• Output data - Stand condition time series shapefiles (six epochs between 2009-2016) for red gum, black box and coolibah (geodatabase of shape files; 990MB)
• Output data - four bands Landsat stand condition output image with bands one to four contains crown extent, plant area index, live basal area and condition score respectively (floating point raster image; 331GB – approximately 50GB per epoch).
The Terms and conditions for using the data and related resources from this website can be found at https://www.data.gov.au/about.