The National Spectral Database (NSD) houses data from Australian remote sensing scientists. The database includes spectra covering targets as diverse as mineralogy, soils, plants, water bodies and various land surfaces. Currently the database holds spectral information from multiple locations across the country and as the collection grows in spatial / temporal coverage, the NSD will service continental scale validation requirements of the Earth observation community for satellite-based measurements of surface reflectance. <b>Value:</b> Curated spectral data provides a wealth of knowledge to remote sensing scientists. For other parties interested in calibration and validation (Cal/Val) of surface reflectance products, the Geoscience Australia (GA) Cal/Val dataset provides a useful resource of ground-truth data to compare to reflectance captured by Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 satellites. The Aquatic Library is a robust collection of Australian datasets from 1994 to present time, primarily of end-member and substratum measurements. The University of Wollongong collection represents immense value in end-member studies, both terrestrial and aquatic. <b>Scope:</b> The NSD covers Australian data including historical datasets as old as 1994. Physical study sites encompass locations around Australia, with spectra captured in every state. <b>Data types:</b> - Spectral data: raw digital numbers (DN), radiance and reflectance.  - From spectral bands VIS-NIR, SWIR1 & SWIR2: wavelengths 350nm - 2500nm collected with instruments in the field or lab setting. Contact for further information: NSDB_manager@ga.gov.au

Digital Earth Australia (DEA) is a world-class digital infrastructure that uses satellite data, in the form of images and information, to detect physical changes across Australia in unprecedented detail. It identifies soil and coastal erosion, crop growth, water quality and changes to cities and regions. DEA provides government, industry, and individuals with the high-quality data and tools required for policy and investment decision-making. DEA will support industry productivity and innovation and the development of new digital products and services. These capabilities will improve decision-making, increase business efficiency, bolster profits and create jobs. For more information visit www.ga.gov.au/dea

Factsheet for DEA with information relevant to stakeholders from the earth observation iand other related industries.

Australia has a vast and highly dynamic coastline of over 30,000 kilometres with many unique environments: sandy beaches, rocky cliffs, muddy tidal flats, and mangroves. Until recently, this scale and complexity has meant that many of Australia's coastal environments have been poorly and inconsistently mapped, particularly in dynamic or remote regions where accurate survey data can be extremely challenging and costly to obtain. In recent years, however, satellites orbiting our planet have provided a new and powerful source of information about Australia's coast and how it has changed over recent decades. Digital Earth Australia is a government platform that prepares these vast volumes of satellite data and makes it available to governments and industry for easy use. This talk will showcase how new and innovative analysis techniques can be applied to petabytes of DEA satellite data to better understand and monitor Australia's vast coastal zone from space: from using the rise and fall of the tide to map the 3D shape of Australia's coast, to track how our coastline has shifted and changed over the past three decades in unprecedented scale and detail. We will demonstrate how these freely available coastal products and tools developed by Digital Earth Australia can be used by scientists, managers, policymakers and the general public to provide new information to help maintain and protect Australia's iconic shores for future generations.

Analysis Ready Data (ARD) takes medium resolution satellite imagery captured over the Australian continent and corrects for inconsistencies across land and coastal fringes. The result is accurate and standardised surface reflectance data, which is instrumental in identifying and quantifying environmental change. This product is a single, cohesive ARD package, which allows you to analyse surface reflectance data as is, without the need to apply additional corrections. ARD consists of sub products, including : 1) NBAR Surface Reflectance which produces standardised optical surface reflectance data using robust physical models which correct for variations and inconsistencies in image radiance values. Corrections are performed using Nadir corrected Bi-directional reflectance distribution function Adjusted Reflectance (NBAR). 2) NBART Surface Reflectance which performs the same function as NBAR Surface Reflectance, but also applies terrain illumination correction. 3) OA Observation Attributes product which provides accurate and reliable contextual information about the data. This 'data provenance' provides a chain of information which allows the data to be replicated or utilised by derivative applications. It takes a number of different forms, including satellite, solar and surface geometry and classification attribution labels. ARD enables generation of Derivative Data and information products that represent biophysical parameters, either summarised as statistics, or as observations, which underpin an understanding of environmental dynamics. The development of derivative products to monitor land, inland waterways and coastal features, such as: - urban growth - coastal habitats - mining activities - agricultural activity (e.g. pastoral, irrigated cropping, rain-fed cropping) - water extent Derivative products include: - Water Observations from Space (WOfS) - National Intertidal Digital Elevation Model (NIDEM) - Fractional Cover (FC) - Geomedian ARD and Derivative products are reproduced through a period collection upgrade process for each sensor platform. This process applied improvements to the algorithms and techniques and benefits from improvements applied to the baseline data that feeds into the ARD production processes. <b>Value: </b>These data are used to understand distributions of and changes in surface character, environmental systems, land use. <b>Scope: </b>Australian mainland and some part of adjacent nations. Access data via the DEA web page - <a href="https://www.dea.ga.gov.au/products/baseline-data">https://www.dea.ga.gov.au/products/baseline-data</a>

Factsheet for DEA with information relevant to stakeholders from the Australian Government

60 second video announcing Digital Earth Australia - a world first analysis platform for satellite imagery and other Earth observations.

Digital Earth Australia (DEA) is a key piece of public data infrastructure that uses images and information recorded by satellites orbiting our planet to detect physical changes across Australia in unprecedented detail. Landsat 5, 7 and 8 ‘analysis-ready’ data are currently available within DEA, where the raw satellite data have been corrected and orthorectified to enable easy interrogation of data across sensors. Geoscience Australia is developing techniques for analysing the data within DEA to identify wetlands and groundwater dependent ecosystems across northern Australia. These techniques include summarising observations of ‘wetness’ acquired over 30 years and linking these observations to gridded rainfall measurements to identity waterbodies and wetlands that persist during periods of low rainfall. These wetness summaries have been shown to correspond with known spring complexes in the Carmichael River catchment in Queensland, and have been used to improve the understanding of groundwater discharge processes within basalt provinces in the Upper Burdekin region in Queensland. This poster was submitted/presented to the 2018 Australian Geoscience Council Convention (AGCC) 14-18 October (https://www.agcc.org.au/)

<b>This record has been superseded by eCat 148920 DEA Waterbodies v3.0 (Landsat) with approval from N.Mueller on 01/02/2024 This record was retired 15/09/2022 with approval from S.Oliver as it has been superseded by eCat 146197 DEA Waterbodies (Landsat) </b> <p>Up to date information about the extent and location of surface water provides all Australians with a common understanding of this valuable and increasingly scarce resource. <p>Digital Earth Australia Waterbodies shows the wet surface area of waterbodies as estimated from satellites. It does not show depth, volume, purpose of the waterbody, nor the source of the water. <p>Digital Earth Australia Waterbodies uses Geoscience Australia’s archive of over 30 years of Landsat satellite imagery to identify where almost 300,000 waterbodies are in the Australian landscape and tells us the wet surface area within those waterbodies. <p>It supports users to understand and manage water across Australia. For example, users can gain insights into the severity and spatial distribution of drought, or identify potential water sources for aerial firefighting during bushfires. <p>The tool uses a water classification for every available Landsat satellite image and maps the locations of waterbodies across Australia. It provides a timeseries of wet surface area for waterbodies that are present more than 10% of the time and are larger than 3125m2 (5 Landsat pixels). <p>The tool indicates changes in the wet surface area of waterbodies. This can be used to identify when waterbodies are increasing or decreasing in wet surface area.

Analysis Ready Data (ARD) are satellite data that have been pre-processed for immediate analysis with minimal user effort. The generation of Surface Reflectance (SR) from optical satellite data, involves a series of corrections to standardise the data and enable meaningful comparison of data from multiple sensors and across time. Surface reflectance data are foundational for time-series analyses and rapid generation of other information products. Field based validation of surface reflectance data is therefore critical to determine its fitness for purpose, and applicability for downstream product development. In this paper, an approach for continental scale validation of the surface reflectance data from Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 satellites, using field-based measurements that are near-synchronous to the satellite observations over multiple sites across Australia is presented. Good practice measurement protocols governing the acquisition of field data, including field instrument calibration, sampling strategy and approach for post-collection processing and management of field spectral data are outlined. This study has been a nationally coordinated, collaborative field data collection campaign across Australia. Permanent field sites, to support validation efforts within the broader Earth Observation (EO) community for continental scale products were also identified. The approach is expected to serve as a model for coordinated ongoing validation of ARD products at continental to global scales. Presented at the 2019 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS)