Maximum number of consecutive dry years from two-monthly surface water extent for MDB using MIM and WOFS

The multi-index method (MIM) (refer to Ticehurst, Teng and Sengupta 2022 in the Related Links for a description of the method) was developed for mapping surface water across the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) based on Landsat surface reflectance data available in Digital Earth Australia. More than thirty years of two-monthly images of surface water extent across the whole MDB have been produced using this method, along with Water Observations from Space (WOfS) to fill in any gaps associated with cloud cover due to the different cloud masks used. The maximum annual water extent was derived from the MIM-WOfS layers, which were then used to calculate the maximum number of consecutive years that a pixel is dry from 1988 to 2022, and 2010 to 2022 (which excludes the Millenium Drought). The data were produced as part of the Murray-Darling Basin Ecosystem Function (MDB-EF) project.