Geoscience Australia has created a DVD 'Landsat Metadata Map Ups of Indonesia' for the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry (MoF). The DVD contains Landsat metadata information sourced from USGS and GISTDA for selected years based on the catalogue searches that Geoscience Australia has done to-date. This is one of the action items from the Bali Remote Sensing workshop in February 2009.

Improving techniques for mapping land surface composition at regional- to continental-scale is the next step in delivering the benefits of remote sensing technology to Australia. New methodologies and collaborative efforts have been made as part of a multi-agency project to facilitate uptake of these techniques. Calibration of ASTER data with HyMAP has been very promising, and following an program in Queensland, a mosaic has been made for the Gawler-Curnamona region in South Australia. These programs, undertaken by Geoscience Australia, CSIRO, and state and industry partners, aims to refine and standardise processing and to make them easily integrated with other datasets in a GIS.

Continent-scale digital maps of mineral information of the Earth's land surface are now achievable using geoscience-tuned remote sensing systems. Multispectral ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) data and the derived mineral information provide the opportunity for characterization of geological and soil processes including the nature of the regolith (weathered) cover and alteration footprints of hydrothermal ore deposits [1,2]. This paper describes work from the Western Australian (WA) Centre of Excellence for 3D Mineral Mapping, which is part of CSIRO's Minerals Down Under Flagship and supported by Geoscience Australia and other Australian geosurveys, to generate a series of ASTER mineral group maps (both content and composition) for the whole Australian continent at a 30 m pixel resolution.. The input ASTER L1B radiance-at-sensor data were provided by ERSDAC (Japan), NASA and the USGS. These data were corrected for instrument, illumination, atmospheric and geometric effects. About 4000 ASTER scenes from an archive of >30,000 scenes were selected to generate the continent-scale ASTER map and Hyperion scenes were used for reduction and validation of the cross-calibrated ASTER mosaic to reflectance. Band ratios [2] were applied as base algorithms and masked to remove complicating effects, such as green vegetation, clouds and deep shadow. Types of generated geoscience products include (1) mineral group content maps based on continuum-band depths (e.g. Al-OH group content mapping Al-OH clays like muscovite, kaolinite and montmorillonite) and (2) mineral group composition maps (e.g. Al-OH group composition ranging from Si-rich white mica through to well ordered kaolinite) based on ratios but masked using the relevant content products.

This data package consists of 83 QuickBird satellite images, each in four spectral bands at 2.4 metre spatial resolution. The scene locations are scattered around the Australian coast line. The data was initially acquired as part of a joint project involving Geoscience Australia (GA), CSIRO Land and Water and the University of Tasmania, as part of the National Land and Water Resource Audit (NLWRA). The data are supplied under licence and potential licensees must first seek specific approval from the satellite operator (through GA) before being granted access to the data.

Nadir BRDF Adjusted Reflectance correction standardizes Landsat data to enable image intercomparison. The method accounts for within-scene sun, view and sensor geometry variations by using coupled physics-based atmospheric and BRDF models. The BRDF shape functions derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data with the MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmission version 5 (MODTRAN) radiative transfer model.

The developed method of long-strip adjustment for orientation and georeferencing of PRISM imagery is based on the merging of successive images within a single satellite pass into what amounts to a single image covering the entire orbit segment. Metadata for each separate scene is merged to produce a single, continuous set of orbit and attitude parameters, such that the entire strip of tens of images can be treated as a single image, even though the separate scenes are not actually merged. Within the strip adjustment, the orbit parameters are refined based on the provision of GCPs at each end of the strip. A minimum of four GCPs is required to achieve 1-pixel georeferencing accuracy, even for strip lengths of 1000 km or more. The merging of orbit data results in a very considerable reduction in both the number of unknown orientation parameters and the number of required GCPs in the sensor orientation adjustment. Indeed the number of required GCPs can drop from well over 100 to only 4-6 for a 50-image orbit segment. Moreover, unlike in traditional photogrammetric strip adjustment, there is no need for tie-point measurements between images. Once the adjusted orbit parameters are obtained, the georeferencing and orthorectification process can revert to a fully automatic image-by-image computation. Following orthorectification, a final mosaicking is undertaken to produce the reference image, namely the AGRI. AGRI was needed because imagery from emerging new satellites can be automatically registered to it, consistently and accurately. AGRI was made possible by the developed long-strip adjustment approach to satellite image georeferencing. This technique, implemented in Barista, rendered the project feasible in time, logistics and cost. It reduced the image registration problem from correction of almost 10,000 scenes to correction of just 105 orbit segments. Moreover, the number of required GCPs was reduced from more than 30,000 to less than 1000.

SPOTMaps are seamles, uniform, orthorectified territorial coverages produced with 2.5 metre colour imagery acquired by the SPOT 5 satellite. Spectral mode: Colour (3 bands) Location accuracy: 10 to 15 metres RMS, depending on the country Preprocessing level: Ortho (DEM used: Reference 3D or SRTM DTED-1 according to availability) Projection: UTM WGS 84 Format: GeoTiff

Normalising for atmospheric, land surface bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) and terrain illumination effects are essential in satellite data processing. It is important both for a single scene when the combination of land cover, sun, view angles and terrain slope angles create anisotropy and for multiple scenes in which the sun angle changes. Geoscience Australia (GA) is establishing a procedure to conduct physically based atmospheric BRDF and terrain illumination correction for moderate spatial resolution satellite imagery (10-100 m) such as Landsat using a coupled atmospheric and BRDF model. In particular, the method is not dependent on the image data, does not need extensive field data, can be applied equally to different environments and used with different sensors in a consistent way. Furthermore, the corrected surface reflectance derived using this method can be used to calibrate and cross-calibrate satellite sensors. More importantly, the normalized reflectance can be used for time series analysis to trace climate change and land cover variation using multiple sensors (including satellite, airborne and ground based). In this paper, we will describe the algorithm being progressed at GA. Preliminary results from the algorithm will be compared with ground based reflectance measurements for selected validation sites. The paper will also discuss how the environmental input data for the model, such as aerosol, water vapour and BRDF parameters are selected and applied.

Mapping of regolith materials at the regional and continental-scale for environmental, agricultural and resource exploration for is being advanced through a new generation of remote sensing technologies, particularly satellite remote sensing methods. The work has demonstrated the identification and classification of regolith materials and thickness indicators is essential to facilitate ongoing exploration in challenging regolith-dominated terrains, and that geochemical information about alteration chemistry associated with footprints of mineral systems can be acquired by analysing spectral ground response, particularly in short-wave infra-red.

Preliminary regolith mapping of the Highland Rocks region using Landsat MSS and high resolution gamma-ray spectrometric imagery: Australian Geological Survey Organisation. 18 pages; 6 fig, 12 ref.