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Characterising groundwater dependent ecosystems of the Upper Darling floodplain using optical and radar remote sensing

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

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Groundwater is critical to the survival of a range of ecosystems in Australia through provision of a direct source of water to plants with suitable root systems, and through discharge into surface water systems. Effectively managing groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) alongside other water demands requires the ability to identify, characterise, and monitor vegetation condition.   As part of the Exploring for the Future Upper Darling Floodplain (UDF) groundwater project in western New South Wales, we present results from a study testing the suitability of two novel methods (a) recently available tasselled cap percentile products with national coverage through Digital Earth Australia, and (b) dry-conditions interferometric radar (InSAR) coherence images for mapping vegetation that is potentially groundwater dependent.     A combination of greenness and wetness 10th percentile tasselled cap products delineated terrestrial and aquatic GDEs with greater accuracy than existing regional ecosystem mapping, demonstrating the utility of these products for GDE identification. These results suggest the tasselled cap products can be used to support and refine the existing GDE mapping for this region, and further testing of their suitability and application for other regions is warranted.     The InSAR coherence images produced good agreement with the Bureau of Meteorology national GDE Atlas for areas of high probability of groundwater dependence. Although data availability and technical expertise currently lags behind optical imagery products, if research continues to show good performance in mapping potential GDEs and other applications, InSAR could become an important line of evidence within multi-dataset investigations.     Key next steps for improving the utility of these techniques  are (a) comparison with vegetation condition data, and (b) further assessment of the likelihood of groundwater dependence through assessing relationships between vegetation condition and groundwater, surface water, and soil moisture availability.    This abstract was submitted/presented to the 2023 Australasian Groundwater / New Zealand Hydrological Society (AGC NZHS) Joint Conference (https://www.hydrologynz.org.nz/events-1/australasian-groundwater-nzhs-joint-conference)

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Field Value
Title Characterising groundwater dependent ecosystems of the Upper Darling floodplain using optical and radar remote sensing
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/659b7b51-fd73-4a0c-9dc3-502e1628f8da
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Characterising groundwater dependent ecosystems of the Upper Darling floodplain using optical and radar remote sensing". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/characterising-groundwater-dependent-ecosystems-of-the-upper-darling-floodplain-using-optical-a