AusCover Good Practice Guidelines released

October 12, 2015 source: Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Leave a comment

AusCover announces the release of the “AusCover Good Practice Guidelines” – A technical handbook providing details on how to correct and check remotely sensed data products to ensure they can be used for science and management applications.

Earth Observation (EO) data are regarded as critical and essential information across multiple sectors in most countries around the world. In Australia alone, the use of EO-data is estimated to underpin close to $4Billon per year of economic activity. However, for the EO measurements to be useful, to support decision making and reporting activities, the collection of image and field data sets needs to be accurate, precise and able to be reproduced following appropriate procedures. The release of the “AusCover Good Practice Guidelines” demonstrates a unique collaboration across the terrestrial remote sensing community in Australia that was brought together under the Terrestrial Ecosystem Network (TERN). The Guidelines are an Australian first in providing detailed information in a dynamic and up-date-able form for calibrating and validating (Cal/Val) remote sensing derived products in a consistent manner. This will enable development, delivery and hopefully more appropriate use of EO products in Australia, as well as fostering our current and future international collaborations.

We invite you to access version-1 of this ebook via the AusCover website (www.auscover.org.au), and to contribute to this resource which endeavours to ensure that a sound link between ground and image data is maintained.

We would also like to especially thank our reviewers Professor Nicholas Coops, Dr Joanne Nightingale and Professor Richard Lucas for their constructive comments and suggestions and Dr Mariela Soto Berelov for assembling the document and making it all happen!