1f47e3c1-d30f-4c19-a68f-fe6418559d61 urn:uuid eng UTF-8 nonGeographicDataset nonGeographicDataset 2025-10-16T17:31:52 creation ISO 19115 2016 Enhanced barest earth Landsat imagery for soil and lithological modelling 1f47e3c1-d30f-4c19-a68f-fe6418559d61 Remotely sensed datasets provide fundamental information for understanding the chemical, physical and temporal dynamics of the atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere. Satellite remote sensing has been used extensively in mapping the nature and characteristics of the terrestrial land surface, including vegetation, rock, soil and landforms, across global to local-district scales. With the exception of hyper-arid regions, mapping rock and soil from space has been problematic because of vegetation that either masks the underlying substrate or confuses the spectral signatures of geological materials (i.e. diagnostic mineral spectral features), making them difficult to resolve. As part of the Exploring for the Future program, a new barest earth Landsat mosaic of the Australian continent using time-series analysis significantly reduces the influence of vegetation and enhances mapping of soil and exposed rock from space. Here, we provide a brief background on geological remote sensing and describe a suite of enhanced images using the barest earth Landsat mosaic for mapping surface mineralogy and geochemistry. These geological enhanced images provide improved inputs for predictive modelling of soil and rock properties over the Australian continent. In one case study, use of these products instead of existing Landsat TM band data to model chromium and sodium distribution using a random forest machine learning algorithm improved model performance by 28–46%. Citation: Wilford, J. and Roberts, D., 2020. Enhanced barest earth Landsat imagery for soil and lithological modelling. In: Czarnota, K., Roach, I., Abbott, S., Haynes, M., Kositcin, N., Ray, A. and Slatter, E. (eds.) Exploring for the Future: Extended Abstracts, Geoscience Australia, Canberra, 1–4. {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": [[[111.4225, -44.2137], [155.5436, -44.2137], [155.5436, -8.9285], [111.4225, -8.9285], [111.4225, -44.2137]]]} 111.4225 155.5436 -44.2137 -8.9285 EARTH SCIENCES EFTF Exploring for the Future Landsat TM Mineralogy Published_External Rock Satellite imagery Soils Surface remote sensing Extended Abstract for download (pdf) [25.5 MB] documentDigital Extended Abstract for download (pdf) [25.5 MB] PDF Link to related dataset documentDigital Link to related dataset HTML