Sentinel-2 Barest Earth imagery for soil and lithological mapping

Satellite imagery provides useful data for mapping the characteristics of exposed rock and soil. However, these materials in many environments are masked by vegetation. To address this the Sentinel-2 Barest Earth thematic product provides a national scale mosaic of the Australian continent with significantly reduced influence of seasonal vegetation cover to support enhanced mapping of soil and geology. The barest earth algorithm, operating on all available Sentinel-2 A and Sentinel-2 B observations up to September 2020, preferentially weights bare ground exposure through time to more directly map the surface mineralogy and geochemistry of soil and rock. The algorithm uses a high-dimensional weighted geometric median approach that maintains the spectral relationships across all Sentinel-2 bands building on a similar approach applied to the deeper Landsat time series archive. Both barest earth products have spectral bands in the visible near infrared and shortwave infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, the main visible and near-infrared Sentinel-2 bands have a spatial resolution of 10 meters compared to 30m for the Landsat TM equivalents. Furthermore, although the first Sentinel-2 satellite was launched in 2015 the twin orbiting satellite configuration provides shorter revisit times that increase the frequency of observations and probability of observing barer pixels amongst observations obscured by clouds and shadows. The Sentinel-2 satellite has broad application in environmental and geological sciences. The barest earth approach generates a complimentary set of spectral bands with reduced vegetation influence for more directed geological applications. We discuss the barest earth algorithm and compare non-bare and barest earth Sentinel-2 imagery. A series of enhance Sentinel-2 images are used to illustrate the potential of the barest earth datasets for mapping soil and bedrock and we summarise key band ratios that can be used as proxies for mapping surface mineralogy including iron oxides and hydroxyl minerals.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Creation)
2021-11-23
Date (Publication)
2021-11-23T23:42:05
Date (Revision)
2021-12-01T06:00:58
Citation identifier
Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/146125

Citation identifier
Digital Object Identifier/http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/146125

Cited responsible party
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Author

Wilford, J.

 MEG Internal Contact
Author

Roberts, D.

 EGD Internal Contact
Purpose

Sentinel-2 Barest Earth imagery for soil and lithological mapping Extended abstract

Status
Completed
Point of contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Resource provider

Minerals, Energy and Groundwater Division

 External Contact
Point of contact

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice
Point of contact

Thomas, M.

 MEG Internal Contact
Spatial representation type

Extent

Extent

N
S
E
W


Maintenance and update frequency
As needed

Resource format

Title

Product data repository: Various Formats

Website

Data Store directory containing the digital product files

Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes

Keywords

  • remote sensing

Discipline

  • satellite imagery

theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf

  • EARTH SCIENCES

Keywords

  • geology

Keywords

  • Regolith

Keywords

  • spectral mapping

Project

  • Exploring for the Future

Project

  • EFTF

Keywords

  • Surface

Keywords

  • Published_External

Resource constraints

Title

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Alternate title

CC-BY

Edition

4.0

Website

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
License

Resource constraints

Classification
Unclassified
Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Distribution Information

Distributor contact
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details
Distributor

Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

 Voice
OnLine resource

Extended Abstract for download (pdf) [5.1 MB]

Extended Abstract for download (pdf) [5.1 MB]

Distribution format

  • pdf

Resource lineage

Hierarchy level
Document

Metadata constraints

Classification
Unclassified

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/54c12094-21fd-4342-90de-e2da651a0c12

Title

GeoNetwork UUID

Type of resource

Resource scope
Document
Name

GA publication: Extended Abstract

Alternative metadata reference

Title

Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

uuid

Citation identifier
eCatId/146125

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au:8080/geonetwork/srv/eng//metadata/add5bc51-dd4d-408c-8c1b-deebaacf6efe

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng//metadata/d0b9c198-59fa-4db2-9486-a1dabb91549b

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/d0b9c198-59fa-4db2-9486-a1dabb91549b

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au:80/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/d0b9c198-59fa-4db2-9486-a1dabb91549b

Metadata linkage

https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/54c12094-21fd-4342-90de-e2da651a0c12

Date info (Creation)
2018-05-04T03:37:56
Date info (Revision)
2018-05-04T03:38:12

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3 (Draft Schemas 2015)

Edition date
2015-07-01T00:00:00
Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, April 2015

 
 

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

EFTF Exploring for the Future Regolith Surface geology remote sensing satellite imagery spectral mapping
theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
EARTH SCIENCES

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