Data & Software

Australia’s Environment

This interactive data explorer shows national-scale information on land cover, forest cover, bushfire, water availability, landscape health, carbon storage, and rivers and wetlands. The information can be accessed as interactive maps and as environmental accounts and graphs, allowing all data to be examined by region and land cover type, to be compared to preceding years, or to be downloaded for further analysis. [link]

Asia-Pacific Water Monitor

The Asia-Pacific Water Monitor uses satellite and on-ground measurements, weather forecasts and a hydrological model to produce near-real time water balance estimates for the Asia-Pacific region. Maps show precipitation, streamflow, catchment water storage, and evapotranspiration. Information is presented as actual values, deciles, anomalies and percentage of average. Information is available for daily totals and 30-day averages. [link]

W3 and AWRA-L landscape hydrology models

The World-Wide Water model (W3) and its predecessor, the Australian Water Resources Assessment Landscape model (AWRA-L), are two near-identical models for grid-based estimation of daily water balance dynamics and water-related vegetation dynamics. The example Matlab implementation of W3 model is freely available for download. You can find the code, relevant literature, and some course material here.

MSWEP : Multi-Source Weighted-Ensem­ble Pre­cip­i­ta­tion

is a new global terres­trial pre­cip­i­ta­tion (P) dataset (1979–2015) with a high 3-hourly temporal and 0.25° spa­tial res­o­lu­tion (Beck et al., 2016). The dataset is unique in that it takes advan­tage of a wide range of data sources, includ­ing gauge, satel­lite, and reanaly­sis data, to obtain the best pos­si­ble P esti­mates at global scale. download data [Australia (THREDDS) – Europe (FTP)]
Reference: Beck, H.E., A.I.J.M. van Dijk, V. Lev­iz­zani, J. Schellekens, D.G. Miralles, B. Martens, A. de Roo: MSWEP: 3-hourly 0.25° global grid­ded pre­cip­i­ta­tion (1979–2015) by merg­ing gauge, satel­lite, and reanaly­sis data, Hydrol­ogy and Earth Sys­tem Sci­ences Dis­cus­sions, doi:10.5194/hess-2016–236, 2016.[ read ]

Global 0.05° Gross Primary Production estimates

Global estimates of monthly gross primary production for 2000-2012 at 0.05° resolution (~5 km) derived from MODIS remote sensing using a simple and effective method considering radiation and canopy conductance limitations on GPP. [download data]
Reference: Yebra, M, Van Dijk, A.I.J.M., Leuning, R., Guerschman, J.P. (2015) Global vegetation gross primary production estimation using satellite-derived light-use efficiency and canopy conductance, Remote Sensing of Environment 163: 206–216 [ read ]

Global above-ground biomass carbon (v1.0)

Global estimates of annual average above-ground biomass carbon (ABC) for 1993-2012, based on a harmonised time series of Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD) derived from a series of satellite passive microwave instruments. Both VOD and ABC are available. [data description – download data]
Reference: Liu, Y.Y., A.I.J.M. van Dijk, R.A.M. de Jeu, J.G. Canadell, M.F. McCabe, J.P. Evans and G. Wang (2015) Recent reversal in loss of global terrestrial biomass, Nature Climate Change 5, doi: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2581. [read]

eartH2Observe W3RA (v1.0) water balance estimates

All main water balance components and various other variables simulated for 1979-2012 using the WATCH-Forcing-Data-ERA-Interim (WFDEI) forcing data set and made available by the European FP7 project eartH2Observe. [ Interactive E2O data portal – direct link (THREDDS) ]
Reference: contained within the data files.

Global Water Cycle Reanalysis

Estimates of monthly average water storage in different components of the water cycle for 2003-2012 at 1⁰. Estimates were derived by assimilating satellite data into a model ensemble. Data are available for sub-surface (soil and groundwater) storage and storage in ice & snow, rivers, lakes, and oceans.
Reference: Van Dijk, A. I. J. M., Renzullo, L. J., Wada, Y., and Tregoning, P. A global water cycle reanalysis (2003–-2012) merging satellite gravimetry and altimetry observations with a hydrological multi-model ensemble (2014) Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 18, 2955-2973. [read]

Global Canopy Conductance

Canopy conductance at a global scale based on three vegetation indices (NDVI, EVI and Kc) derived from the MODIS MCD43C4 reflectance product. The data is produced globally at 0.05⁰ and every 8 days. Monthly and annual climatologies are also available.
Reference: Yebra, M., Van Dijk, A., Leuning, R., Huete, A., Guerschman, J.P., 2013. Evaluation of optical remote sensing to estimate actual evapotranspiration and canopy conductance. Remote Sensing of Environment, 129, 250-261 [read]

High-resolution Evapotranspiration for Australia

Estimates of actual evapotranspiration across Australia based on MODIS reflectance and short wave infra-red data, and gridded meteorological surfaces.  The data have 8-day and 500 m resolution.
Reference: Guerschman J.P., van Dijk, A.I.J.M., Mattersdorf, G., Beringer, J., Hutley, L.B., Leuning, R., Pipunic, R.C. and Sherman, B.S. (2009), Scaling of potential evapotranspiration with MODIS data reproduces flux observations and catchment water balance observations across Australia. Journal of Hydrology, 369, 107-119.  [read]