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Derived data product DEA Fractional Cover

  • Split landscape into land cover types

  • Data for every 30 square metres of Australia

  • Get insights into crops, soil and vegetation

fluorescent pink, blue, purple, and yellow abstract image of complex landscape as captured by satellite
Updated
As needed
Satellite data from
Landsat
Data since
1987
Released
2015

Quick links

See the colours of our country

Digital Earth Australia (DEA) Fractional Cover splits landscape observation data into three parts — or fractions — enabling measurement of green (leaves, grass, and growing crops), brown (branches, dry grass or hay, and dead leaf litter), and bare ground (soil or rock) in any area of Australia at any time since 1987

two-panel image of cropland showing real-colour greys and browns contrasted with false-colour fluorescent pink, blue, purple, and yellow interpretation

True-colour Sentinel-2 reflectance image of Queensland cropland contrasted with fractional vegetation cover from reflectance values

silhouette of grasses against deep purple and pink sky

The product can characterise any 30 square metres of Australia, giving insights into not only vegetation, soil and water, but also land, crop and grazing management

Man on a brown horse musters cattle down a dusty road

Reveal which parts of a property show heavy or under-grazing. Make adjustments and track the success of interventions

Why look at land in cover types?

  • Contribute to soil erosion, ecosystem, and vegetation modelling

  • Feed data into crop rotation, stubble management, and rangeland management

  • Provide insights into the interplay and changes in areas of vegetation and bare soil

  • Enable policy agencies, land managers and scientists to monitor land conditions over large areas and long timeframes

Aerial photo of green harvester creates pink tracks through cotton field

Imagery for impact The colours of Keytah

The vast 65,000 acres of Keytah Station in western NSW gets the fractional cover treatment, revealing just how much change Australia’s agricultural landscapes undergo

Related resources

Abstract colorful fluorescent image of landscape

DEA Fractional Cover Percentiles

This product calculates the statistical summaries (10th, 50th and 90th percentile) of fractional cover per epoch (whole-of-archive-summary, annual, seasonal)

DEA Fractional Cover Percentiles See the product
line illustration of Australia with grid overlay over Queensland

Journal article

‘Continuity of reflectance data between Landsat-7 ETM+ and Landsat-8 OLI, for both top-of-atmosphere and surface reflectance: A study in the Australian landscape’

Journal article Read the paper

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