The TERN-ANU Landscape Data Visualiser

There is an abundance of data on Australia’s natural resources and ecosystems. Often, however, the data are hard to find and cannot easily be explored and analysed by a non-expert user. That is why the ANU Centre for Water and Landscape Dynamics (ANU-WALD) and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) have teamed up to develop the TERN-ANU Landscape Data Visualiser, a web atlas of spatial data on our landscapes, soils, ecosystems and water resources available from ANU, TERN and other organisations.

The Visualiser allows you to drill into time series for any location, compare to data sets, and download data for further processing.

You can visualise and analyses data from airborne data collection (e.g. LiDAR and hyperspectral imaging), a range of time series from satellite remote sensing and modelling, data from field surveys (e.g. the TERN Ecosystem Surveillance Plots) and time series from station measurements such as the OzFlux energy, water and carbon flux measurement network.

You can compare time series for any two locations or variables, and easily download the any of the data shown.

 

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Terms of Use

By using the TERN-ANU Landscape Data Visualiser you are agreeing to be bound by these Terms of Use. These terms may change from time to time.

Copyright: Copyright or other rights in material included within the TERN-ANU Landscape Data Visualiser may belong to Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) at University of Queensland, the Australian National University (ANU) or third parties. Logos are used with consent. Content contained within this portal is accessible under licenses specified by data providers. Please refer to specific licences associated with specific content for relevant terms of use. Requests for further authorisation should be directed via our about page.

Disclaimer: The TERN-ANU Landscape Data Visualiser and its content is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. You understand and agree that you use the TERN-ANU Landscape Data Visualiser at your own discretion and risk and that you will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through the TERN-ANU Landscape Data Visualiser. Web links to this site from external, third party websites should not be constructed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN or the ANU. If you have any concerns about the veracity of the data or website content, please inform us via our about page.

 

Data Documentation

The Landscape Data Visualiser contains a broad array of data from various sources. Links to further documentation are provided below:

Biomass and Carbon

Water

Soils and Landscape

Biodiversity and Habitat

 

 

Questions and Feedback

Any trouble using the tools on the Landscape Data Visualiser, difficulty finding the right data, or any other questions?

Please send us an email or contact us in another way

We will be delighted to help you and your feedback can help us improve the usefulness of the TERN-ANU Landscape Data Visualiser.

 

       

Australia’s Environment: routine, comprehensive national reporting

National-scale, comprehensive information on the condition, change and trajectory of our environment is essential for successful environmental management. At national scale, the State of Environment report is produced once every five years, with measurements that are often already some years old. There is an urgent need for a continuous and up-to-date environmental monitoring system that can provide the basis for regular state-of-environment and environmental accounts.

Since 2015, we have been developing a data processing system that integrates and summarises spatial data to produce an annual report. The system provides continuity and regularity in environmental condition data. A backbone to the system is our OzWALD technology, a model-data fusion system that integrates satellite remote sensing into spatial computer models to estimate important components of the water and carbon cycles.

In collaboration with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, Integrated Marine Observing System, Geoscience Australia, CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, we have developed ‘’Australia’s Environment”, an annual briefing on the state of our environment. We provide the information at different formats and levels of detail to make them as relevant, accessible and easily interpreted as possible.

The information can be accessed in digest through the annual Fact Sheet, Briefing Material, and summary article.

For those wishing to use the data in accounting or reporting, we provide Australia’s Environment Explorer, a web atlas that allows you to visualise and investigate environmental changes by region, location or land cover type.

 


        



Vegetation structure from laser scanning

Detailed knowledge of the structure of overstorey and understorey vegetation around us has many applications, from nature conservation to forest management and fire risk reduction. Current measurement methods are slow and labour intensive.
Together with CSIRO and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, we have been developing automated technologies to map vegetation structure from LiDAR – laser scanning data derived from handheld scanners or airborne measurements.
These data have a wide range of applications. They help ecologists understand habitat quality and its suitability for different species. They also help fire managers to assess fire risk and plan hazard reduction burns. The data can also be used to measure biomass and carbon storage in forests.



Soil moisture forecasting at property level

Soil moisture information and forecasts are of great help in dryland farming, to provide early warning of drought, flood and fire risk, and to monitor environmental health, to name a few. Current soil moisture mapping services from models and satellite remote sensing are useful, but are often too coarse or inaccurate or do not provide forecasts.
With support from the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network and together with the Bureau of Meteorology, we are developing more accurate soil moisture mapping methods with greater spatial detail at the level of individual properties. We do this by combining different rainfall and soil moisture information sources through data assimilation. Our techniques can operate at different scales, providing forecasts at 10 km resolution for the entire world, down to 25 meters for individual properties.



Water license compliance monitoring from space

In New South Wales, monitoring whether water licence holders use river and groundwater in accordance with their licence is a major challenge. Distances are vast, and extraction is often directly from river floodplains during floods, which makes it very hard to keep an eye on compliance.
Together with New South Wales Government, we are developing a satellite-based system to monitor irrigation water use and water extraction. The proposed system will provide guidance to assist compliance officers in targeting properties for inspection, by determining the likelihood that the amount of irrigation on individual properties estimated from satellite observations exceeds extraction limits.

 

 

       

The Australian Flammability Monitoring System

Flammability is strongly determined by the amount of moisture in the dead and living vegetation matter. Fire services and land managers need information of fuel moisture content to undertake hazard reduction burns, to prepare for the fire season, and to anticipate the difficulty of suppressing bushfires throughout the fire season. At present, very simple equations are used to get an approximate estimate of flammability.

We are developing the next generation of fire risk monitoring tools and making them available to land managers and fire services across Australia through our Australian Flammability Monitoring System. To do that, we are using satellite remote sensing to measure the moisture content of living vegetation. In addition, we are developing new methods to estimate moisture in the surface litter layer by understanding how these are linked to moisture in the soil.

 

 

       

Cosmic rays for fire and flood risk monitoring

The cosmic ray soil moisture probe is a recently invented technology that is set to revolutionise our ability to monitor soil and biomass moisture content.
With support from CSIRO and the Actew/ActewAGL Endowment Fund, we are investigating the potential of this technology for flood and fire risk monitoring in a remote part of the Cotter catchment in Namadgi National Park.
[View latest measurements here or here]



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