Land Cover and Land Use

Sub-Theme

Fractional Ground Cover

Custodian 
CSIRO

The data represent the fractional cover of Photosynthetic Vegetation (PV), Non-Photosynthetic Vegetation (NPV) and Bare Soil (BS).

National Datasets in this Sub-Theme

National Fractional Ground Cover

Purpose

Fractional cover is the exposed proportion of PV, NPV or BS within each pixel. In forested canopies the photosynthetic or non-photosynthetic portions of trees may obscure those of the grass layer and/or bare soil

Dataset Uses

Nationally consistent and regularly updated ground cover information is critical for assessment of environmental targets related to soil erosion and land management in Australia.

Uses include assessments of;

  • erosion risk
  • change in resource conditions
  • carbon storage potential
  • agricultural sustainability and productivity
  • biodiversity
  • effect of management actions

Access and Licensing

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Access and Licensing Details

Products and Services relating to this dataset are made available under open access policy and guidelines. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence Attribution-Share Alike

Quality

The quality of the fractional cover product is dependent on the quality of the MODIS NBAR data, and subject to uncertainties and bias as described in Guerschman et al. (2009 and 2012). The phased production strategy of producing a 16-day composite every 8 days and the combination of the Terra and Aqua sensors in the MCD43A4 collection 5 enhances the chances of obtaining enough cloud-free data for each pixel in each date compared to the same data in collection 4. However, there are still areas with poor data availability, notably in the tropical areas during the monsoonal rains (November to April).

Current Status

Fractional cover is currently available from the NCI at 500 metre spatial resolution for the period 2000 – 2013. The 500m product is now available as version 2.2 with version 3.0 to be released later in 2014.Data is available at https://remote-sensing.nci.org.au/u39/public/html/modis/fractionalcover-clw/

The funding for the maintenance of the 500m MODIS fractional cover product expired in July 2013, the dataset is now maintained on a best efforts basis by CSIRO Land and Water

Future Status

The TERN Fractional Cover algorithm developed by the Joint Remote Sensing Research Program has been applied to the national archive of Landsat data by Geoscience Australia and will be made available to the public via the National Computing Infrastructure in the 2014/15 financial year.

Long Term Objectives

  • Establish Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards compliant web services for all datasets Engage Industry on validation of use cases for this dataset
  • Engage Industry on validation of use cases for this dataset

Key Users

Federal, State and Territory Government Departments, industry and research communities.

Version

1.00

Details