Historical Airborne Data

Aerial photographs have been acquired over mangroves regions in Australia since prior to the 1940s and provide an important historical record of their extent and state, including broad species distributions and donations. From stereo aerial photography, canopy height models (CHMs) can be derived, including from early black and white photography (Lucas et al., 2002).

TERN aims to provide links to aerial photography holdings relevant to mangrove areas and access to products including:

• Orthomosaics from 1991 aerial photography for Kakadu National Park

• Mangrove extent maps from orthomosaics, Kakadu National Park

Multispectral and hyperspectral aerial images provide increased capacity to different mangroves from non-mangrove vegetation and proximal land covers and to discriminate mangrove species.

TERN is providing access to both multispectral and hyperspectral imagery including:

• Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI) data, Kakadu National Park, NT

• Mangrove extent from 2002 CASI data, Kakadu NP, NT

• LIDAR data, Leichardt River, Queensland

• LIDAR extent map, Leichhardt River, Queensland

• LIDAR data, Kakadu NP

• LIDAR extent maps, Kakadu NP

Recent advances in drone technologies have provided significant opportunities for providing detailed information on mangroves including:

• Extent of mangroves and proximal land covers as well as proportional information

• Plant species composition (primarily overstored)

• Canopy cover (overstorey)

• Canopy height (using stereo imagery; Otero et al., 2018))

• Change categories (e.g., disturbance, regeneration, dieback).

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Swampfox drone launch, Kakadu NP, September 2016

A number of drone datasets have been made available through the portal including:

• Drone aerial imagery, Kakadu National Park, NT

Drone data and derived products relevant to mangroves can be uploaded to the TERN Mangrove Portal. A major future benefit of providing these data is that the community has access to a historical and permanent record of mangrove states and dynamics, which can provide invaluable information on the impacts of human-induced and natural environmental change.

References =

Otero, V., Van De Kerchove, R., Satyanarayana, B., Martinez-Espinoas, C., Fisol, M.A.B., Ibrahim, M.R.B., Sulong, I., Mohd-Lokman, H, Lucas, R.M. and Dahdouh-Guebas, F. (2018). Managing mangrove forests from the sky: forest inventory using field data and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imagery in the Matang Mangrove Forest Reserve, peninsular Malaysia. Forest Ecology and Management, 411, 35–45, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2017.12.049

Photographs taken from aircraft that are or have the capacity to be georeferenced provide a valuable source of information that can inform the past states of mangroves and provide a record against which to assess future change. Hence, this section of the TERN Mangrove Portal provides the opportunity to view and download photographs of mangroves throughout Australia.

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Kakadu NP, NTGeoreferenced photographs acquired in September 2016 from Cesna aircraft