Image shows the sediments carried into the ocean from the floods at Carnarvon in Western Australia in March 1995. This image was obtained from the SPOT XS satellite, and acquired and processed by SRSS DOLA.
My interest in the problem of managing spatial variability began 36 years ago, when I was a farm management consultant. I was working with 35 farmers at Broomehill, in the south of Western Australia. It was here that I realised that it is the interaction of the weather and the land surface that creates the complex variability - in both space and time - of the biomass resources that farmers, fishermen and pastoralists struggle to manage.
Without tools to adequately respond to this variability, they are forced into unsustainable management practices that degrade their renewable resource base. Thus we end up with continued tree loss, ongoing salinisation and soil acidification, soil structural decline, loss of biodiversity, desertification of rangelands, uncontrolled bushfires, depleted fish stocks, pollution of rivers and coastal waters, low crop yields and poor pasture use. It all demonstrates that managers lack the information they need in order to sustainably manage Australia's biomass resource base.
The Commonwealth State of the Environment Report written in 2001 concludes that 'the development of adequate and effective responses to environmental challenges is often hampered by the lack of data and information with which to portray accurately how the Australian environėment is changing over time'. Until the spatial-temporal variability is our biomass resources measured, they cannot be managed sustainably. The vast areas and temporal frequencies over which this variability operates render conventional point measurement techniques too costly to be effective. Therefore the widespread adoption of remote sensing methods is essential.
For military reasons, masses of satellite sensors now daily measure the variability of the atmosphere, the oceans and the land surface. The Bureau of Meteorology routinely processes atmospheric data from these sensors as well, due to civilian de’mand for weather forecasts. However, most of the land and ocean information remains unprocessed and inaccessible. This blind spot in our knowledge results in land managers realising only a fraction of the true value of accurate weather forecasts.
Experience in Western Australia and the Northern Territory is that when this information is made available, there are significant improvements in people's ability to manage the biomass. Projects originating in Western Australia, variously named Vegetation Watch, FireWatch, Land Monitor, Land Cover change, AgImage and Pastures from Space, afford plentiful examples to support this conclusion.
NASA scientists have been applying these techniques to understanding the impact of global climate change on the environment for over two decades. On 18 December 1999, as the culmination of these 20 years of research, the first six of these new environmental sensors were launched into space on the Terra platform. Data from the MODIS sensor is now being received in Perth, Alice Springs and Hobart. This offers an unprecedented opportunity to extract near real-time biomass information and make it widely available to resource managers.
This information, when combined with the power of the PC, decision support models and the Internet, offers an opportunity to bridge the knowledge gap between degradation and sustainability. To realise this opportunity, we have developed a proposal for a Co-operative Research Centre for Application of Earth Observations (CAEO). It will be joint venture between the private sector, government agencies, research organisations, uni-versities and rural industry R&D corporations. We seek to raise $21 million over seven years from the Commonwealth to support the CRC.
CAEO will have a major impact on the sustainability of our agricultural, marine, atmospheric and natural vegeta4tion resources. It will make available daily information on the spatial variation of key processes.
In the marine environment, this will include information on phytoplankton, water quality and surface currents of the oceans and coastal regions. This will improve management of fish populations, pollution, environmental degradation and biodiversity. Near real-time atmospheric information will improve pollution monitoring and Bureau of Meteorology weather forecasts.
For agricultural areas and rangelands, we will gather near real-time information on biomass, biomass quality, vegetation types, land use, soils and surface temperature at regional and farm scales.
All this can only result in more profitable grazing and cropping enterprises for farmers, as well as environmentally sustainable systems. It will identify areas of environmental stress. For people surrounded by extensive areas of native vegetation, it will allow improved bushfire and biodiversity management.
Dr Richard Smith is the manager of Satellite Remote Sensing Services at Department of Land Administration in Western Australia; ph: +61-8-9340-9342.
