Potential groundwater dependent ecosystems in the South Nicholson - Georgina Basin identified using Landsat satellite data

Groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) rely on access to groundwater on a permanent or intermittent basis to meet some or all of their water requirements (Richardson et al., 2011). The Tasseled Cap percentile products created by Digital Earth Australia (2023) were used to identify potential GDEs for the South Nicholson-Georgina basins study area. These percentile products provide statistical summaries (10th, 50th, 90th percentiles) of landscape brightness, greenness and wetness in imagery acquired between 1987 and present day. The 10th percentile greenness and wetness represent the lowest 10% of values for the time period evaluated, e.g. 10th percentile greenness represents the least green period. In arid regions, areas that are depicted as persistently green and/or wet at the 10th percentile have the greatest potential to be GDEs. For this reason, and due to accessibility of the data, the 10th percentile Tasseled Cap greenness (TCG) and Tasseled Cap wetness (TCW) products were used as the basis for the assessment of GDEs for the South Nicholson-Georgina region. The 50th percentile greenness was utilised to create the coefficient of variance (CV) dataset.

This data release is an ESRI geodatabase, with layer files, including:

- combined classified 10th percentile greenness and wetness dataset (useful to identify potential groundwater dependent vegetation/other GDEs and differentiate between vegetation types)

- CV of 50th percentile greenness dataset (useful when used in conjunction with the combined product to help identify groundwater dependent vegetation)

For more information and detail on these products, refer to associated report.
<br><strong>References</strong>Digital Earth Australia (2023). <em>Digital Earth Australia User Guide.</em>Richardson, S., E. Irvine, R. Froend, P. Boon, S. Barber, and B. Bonneville. 2011a. <em>Australian groundwater-dependent ecosystem toolbox part 1: Assessment framework.</em> Waterlines Report 69. Canberra, Australia: Waterlines.<br>