DEA Fractional Cover (Landsat, DEPRECATED) ========================================== Fractional Cover 25m 2.2.1 - This product is deprecated and the data no longer available ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- **Authored on**: 2018-03 **Updated on**: 2022-02 **License**: CC BY Attribution 4.0 International License View the [original metadata page](https://cmi.ga.gov.au/data-products/dea/119/dea-fractional-cover-landsat-deprecated) for the most up-to-date information on this product. Abstract -------- This product has been deprecated and is superseded by this product: [DEA Fractional Cover (Landsat)](https://cmi.ga.gov.au/data-products/dea/629/dea-fractional-cover-landsat) Fractional cover data can be used to identify large scale patterns and trends and inform evidence based decision making and policy on topics including wind and water erosion risk, soil carbon dynamics, land management practices and rangeland condition. This information is used by policy agencies, natural and agricultural land resource managers, and scientists to monitor land conditions over large areas over long time frames. What this product offers ------------------------ Fractional Cover (FC), developed by the Joint Remote Sensing Research Program, is a measurement that splits the landscape into three parts, or fractions: - green (leaves, grass, and growing crops) - brown (branches, dry grass or hay, and dead leaf litter) - bare ground (soil or rock) DEA uses Fractional Cover to characterise every 25 m square of Australia for any point in time from 1987 to today. Applications ------------ Fractional cover provides valuable information for a range of environmental and agricultural applications, including: - soil erosion monitoring - land surface process modelling - land management practices (e.g. crop rotation, stubble management, rangeland management) - vegetation studies - fuel load estimation - ecosystem modelling - land cover mapping Accuracy and limitations ------------------------ To provide an estimate of accuracy the FC algorithm results were compared with 1565 field sites that were not used to train the FC model. Based on the comparison with this independent field data the FC product has an overall Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 11.9%. The error margins vary for the three different layers: green RMSE: 11.9%, non-green RMSE: 17.1% and bare RMSE: 14.6%. The effect of soil moisture may impact the accuracy of the FC product, and the similarity between some bare soil endmembers and non-photosynthetic vegetation endmembers can lead to model instability. Soil types/colours that were not included in the model training data may also be error prone. Pixels that show poor model stability are flagged in the model error band as a value of 2, and can be omitted from further analysis if necessary. FC products have no water masking applied, so erroneous values for green vegetation over the water may appear. These should be ignored and can be masked out by applying the Water Observations (WO) layer. Occasionally the sum of the three components is not equal to 100%. Differences are usually small and are not rounded in order to preserve what may be useful seasonal indicators. Landsat 8 OLI has different relative spectral response curves to the Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 7 ETM+ sensors. To account for this a spectral band adjustment factor is applied to the Landsat 8 data to make it more similar to reflectance as measured by Landsat 7. The adjustment factors are described in more detail in Flood (2014). Whilst the same training data has been used to train both the JRSRP fractional cover product and the DEA fractional cover product, differences in the terrain corrected surface reflectance data that are used as model inputs mean that the two products are not identical. The differences between the two products are typically less than 5% for the bare soil and non-green cover types, and typically less than 10% for green cover. References ---------- Flood, N. (2014). 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. *Remote Sensing*, *6*(9), 7952–7970. Muir, J., Schmidt, M., Tindall, D., Trevithick, R., Scarth, P. and Stewart, J.B. (2011). Guidelines for field measurement of fractional ground cover: a technical handbook supporting the Australian Collaborative Land Use and Management Program. *Queensland* *Department of Environment and Resource Management for the Australian Bureau of **Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences*. Scarth, P., Roder, A. and Schmidt, M. (2010). Tracking grazing pressure and climate interaction - the role of Landsat fractional cover in time series analysis. *Proceedings of the 15th Australasian Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Conference.* Schmidt, M., Denham, R. and Scarth, P. (2010), Fractional ground cover monitoring of pastures and agricultural areas in Queensland. *Proceedings of the 15th Australasian Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Conference.* Contacts -------- For questions or more information about this product, email [DEA Support](mailto:dea@ga.gov.au?subject=Data%20Products%20support%20for%20DEA%20Fractional%20Cover%20%28Landsat%2C%20DEPRECATED%29).