BUSH HERITAGE AUSTRALIA AND THE PLANET ACTION

PROGRAM, GENERATING AND USING REMOTELY SENSED

INFORMATION WITHIN A NOT-FOR-PROFIT CONSERVATION
ORGANISATION.
Richard MacNeill B.A.; Dip. Ed.; B. App. Sc.; M. App. Sc.
Bush Heritage Australia
5/395 Collins Street, MELBOURNE, VIC 3000
(03) 8610 9110, (03) 8610 9199
rmacneill@bushheritage.org.au

Abstract

Since 1991 Bush Heritage Australia, a privately funded not-for-profit

conservation organisation, has purchased properties and worked with partners
to protect and foster rare and threatened ecological communities. Bush
Heritage currently owns and manages 34 properties across Australia, a total
area of almost a million hectares, and has plans to manage, either directly or in
partnership, 1% of the Australian landmass by 2025.

The Planet Action program (www.planet-action.org), a Spot image initiative,

provides geographic information and technology to support projects across the
world acting on climate change-related issues. Bush Heritage’s involvement in
the program began in 2008 and was prompted by the opportunity to investigate
remotely sensed imagery and systems until recently beyond the resources and
finances of the private not-for-profit sector. This involvement involved (1)
investigating the use of SPOT imagery to delineate and characterize change in
the state and activity of plant communities by analysing and comparing NDVI
values, and (2) integrating remotely sensed information into ecological
management planning and field-work carried out on Bush Heritage reserves.

This presentation will describe the results of this work within two areas of
southwestern Western Australia: Eurardy Station, a Bush Heritage reserve
North of Geraldton and Gondwana Link, a partnership area within the
Southwestern Botanical province, one of the world’s biodiversity hot-spots.
Introduction
Bush Heritage is a not-for-profit organisation that protects rare and threatened
plant and animal communities through a combination of direct land purchase
and pastoral, Indigenous and business partnerships. Since its inception in 1990,
it has purchased some 31 properties totaling close to 1 million hectares.
The properties owned and managed by Bush Heritage range in size from blocks
of less than 10 hectares to immense pastoral properties over 230,000 hectares
in size. The ecological values within these reserves range from the cool
temperate forests of its Tasmanian reserves to the dune fields of Southwestern

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Queensland. The most remote of Bush Heritage’s properties is located a four
hour journey from the nearest neighbour, provided that the tracks are open.
Bush Heritage faces a number of unique challenges in providing effective
management for its reserves. These include (1) its status as a not-for-profit
organisation, with its consequent financial and resource related uncertainties;
(2) the need to manage the complex and subtle ecologies on all its reserve
alongside the responsibility for managing the facilities and infrastructure of a
pastoral station within a pastoral community; and (3) the need to continually
monitor and report on management and activities specifically intended to
promote change as the ecology of the property is fostered and restored.
This last challenge is of particular importance, because Bush Heritage
acknowledges that its central responsibility is to protect and foster threatened
eco-systems, and it is to this that it is held accountable.
This paper will describe principles, methods and systems used during one year
of work using imagery supplied by SPOT image to delineate and characterize
change related processes, and will present two examples illustrating the results
of this work. Because the methods used, technology adopted and information
synthesized must represent practical opportunities for a not-for-profit agency of
limited means to adopt in the longer term, this paper will conclude with an
assessment of the practicality, cost-effectiveness, rigour and sustainability of
the results of the project and the methods used to obtain them.

The Southwest Australia Climate Change project

In February 2008, SPOT Image offered Bush
Heritage the opportunity to participate in the
Planet Action program by developing the first
of its projects in the Australasian region. Spot
Image, a leading supplier of satellite imagery
and geo-information and ESRI, a leading GIS
technologies provider, launched the Planet
Action program in 2007. The purpose of the
program is to support local Climate Change-
related projects undertaken by NGOs,
universities and research centres by providing
geographic information and technology.
SPOT Image has supported the Southwest
Australia Climate Change project by promptly
supplying satellite imagery and technical
advice. Further technical advice and
assistance was kindly provided by Dr Isobel
Coppa of the Cooperative Research Centre Figure 1: project areas of interest
for Spatial Information, and by Jeremy
Wallace (CSIRO, Western Australia). Bush Heritage Australia acknowledges
and thanks these and others who have provided technical advice and
assistance.

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Bush Heritage selected two areas in southwestern Australia (figure 1) as the
focus for the use of satellite imagery to derive plant growth and condition values
across a temporal series of images and to analyse and assess changes in
these values. Both these areas lie within the Southwest Botanical Province, an
internationally recognised ecological “hotspot” characterized by localized,
complex and subtle combinations of ecological communities threatened by
pastoral land use, population expansion, erosion and wildfire.
The complexity and localized specialization of plants and plant communities in
this area is related to the long term stability of the landscape of the Southwest
Botanical Province and the conditions affecting it. It is this stability that led to
hopes that the often subtle and progressive effects of climate change in
Australia could be more readily isolated in a region where seasonal variation is
less marked and the clearances, invasions and broad changes that have
affected other areas of Australia have been, largely, absent.
The project comprised two complementary stages, both focussing on the use of
satellite imagery to derive Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)
values providing information relating to the condition, growth patterns and
resource usage of plant communities. The first stage reviewed a temporal
series of images to present indicators of change in a graphical form able to
represent characteristics of processes of change. .
The objective of the second stage of the project was to generate specifically
spatial information relating to the character of temporal change across an area.
As with the first stage, NDVI values formed the basis of this work. Lessons
learned in the first stage were applied when correcting and aligning image
series in the second.

Principles
The potential for satellite imagery to provide spatial data relating to changing
conditions and characteristics of vegetation across the landscape has been
recognised and regularly applied over of the last decade. A brief survey of
activity notes the use of imagery to define and classify characteristics of change
that relate to a known or expected phenomenon or process, for instance land
degradation, across a broad area (Thompson et. al 2009), to augment the
process of monitoring vegetation condition (Wallace, Behn and Furby 2006);
Wallace et. al. (2004), and to investigate methods of integrating diverse sources
of remote sensing data into a temporal series of maps (Petit and Lambin, 2001).
A theme that runs through many of these sources is the development of static
derived information, whether digital maps or classified images. This study
assumes that the product need not be static, but can be reviewed and the
techniques used to develop and display it altered according to the situation and
context. Spatial systems able to rapidly and intuitively integrate and analyse
data in or close to the field have recently become more available and cost-
effective, and have dramatically reduced the distances between analysis and
results, data and information and the laboratory and the field. Visually
referenced spatial information, then, is becoming an extension of visual

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information available to ecologists and other land managers as they plan for
and undertake their work in the field.
In choosing techniques for generating, displaying and using information, this
project adhered to three principles:
1. Information generated must extend the range of information currently
used by ecologists and land managers and be essentially heuristic in
that it guides the user to a conclusion rather than proposing one
2. Techniques and resources used must be practical, cost-effective and
sustainable for a not-for-profit agency of limited means.
3. The horse must lead the cart. The results must aid the assessment,
and so must be acceptable within existing structures and processes,
and by ecologists and other practitioners.
Statistics, techniques and software
In planning this project, the first considerations were: did Bush Heritage have
the capacity and resources to complete it, and what level of investigation would
provide the best and most sustained use to the organisation, while remaining
innovative and relevant to the broader ecological and conservation community?
Systems within Bush Heritage that supported land management planning and
operations already included current versions of GIS and image analysis
software capable of sophisticated management and analysis tasks. In
addressing these considerations, the project needed to look most closely at how
results would be used, and how best to ensure that results continued be of
benefit into the future.
To ensure that Bush Heritage was able to complete the project, provide
innovative and practical results, and be able to make use of them over the
longer term, the project selected methods and algorithms for their practicality,
ease of use, familiarity of process and degree of support in existing and readily
accessed software. These comprised (1) NDVI values: essentially ratios of
mass against chlorophyll content, (2) variance: a basic and familiar exploratory
statistic and (3) Principle Component Analysis: a familiar and long-used means
of deriving hierarchies of change.

NDVI
The decision to focus on characteristics of plant communities relating to the
ratios of moisture/chlorophyll to mass, rather than more visible characteristics,
was made in order to extend the range of information available to the user
beyond that available to the naked eye. While vegetation index is a widely used
and readily computed value, it appeared more likely to provide information that
was either already known by an individual familiar with the locality and its
history, or capable of being gathered in ways already in use.
NDVI has been widely used to support analysis of variation in plant related
characteristics within an image. Examples of this analysis include Pettorelli et.
al (2009) and Thompson et. al. (2009). NDVI supports research into an

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increasing range of more complex and refined indices. Examples of recent
research are Roderick et. al. (2001), Berry et. al. (2007) and Keith et. al. (2010).
This project used NDVI values as indicators of plant qualities relating to
condition and growth patterns. NDVI was selected because (1) its shortcomings
and uses are clearly described and a large body of case studies exists allowing
it to be used effectively and results interpreted with appropriate caution, (2) the
algorithm is straightforward and can be performed from first principles in most
standard image analysis modules and (3) an underlying principle that all
information is used heuristically means that, provided the limits of the process
were known, the simpler and more readily performed processes are preferable.
NDVI analysis is available in ERDAS imagine and ERmapper as a self-
contained module that will select appropriate bands from an image that
correspond to the satellite type entered by the user. Importantly, the algorithm
can be entered manually using the ArcGIS map-algebra suite. Readily available
free-ware image analysis packages such as Copenhagen Image Processing
System (University of Copenhagen) can also support NDVI analysis.

Variance
Variance is a basic statistic whose character needs no introduction. This project
used variance as an immediately accessible summary spatial statistic. Clearly, it
cannot provide statistically meaningful values for the limited numbers of images
used. However, it allows an immediate representation of variation that can be
reproduced in most image analysis modules and is present, either as the var
function or the square of the STD function in map-algebra compilations.

Principle Component Analysis

Principle Component Analysis (PCA) is an established method of compressing
images and identifying hierarchies of elements influencing variation within a
data set. Smith (2002) provides a detailed but clear explanation of the
underlying theory and mathematics. PCA is present in the ArcGIS suite of
multivariate functions as the princomp function. The output for this function is a
multi-band image whose number of images correspond to the number of
components selected by the users or the number of images selected for the
analysis.
Because PCA analyses all elements of variation, it was expected that the most
obvious sources of variation will be apparent in the primary levels of the
hierarchy, corresponding to the first bands of the output image. These sources
included landform, vegetation structure and area based features. The most
useful aspect of PCA is that it allows these more obvious sources of variation to
be stripped off, and the focus of the spatial analysis and review to relate to the
more subtle aspects of vegetation across the landscape, reflected in NDVI
values corresponding to growth and condition.

Software
This project used four software systems, ArcGIS (ESRI Corp), Vegmachine
(CSIRO), ERDAS Imagine (ERDAS Inc.) and the ERDAS ATCOR module
(Geosystems GmbH).

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ERDAS Imagine contains a broad range of tools supporting image correction
and analysis. These range from spectral and radiometric enhancement and
correction to generating and interpreting imagery. NDVI is included as a
spectral enhancement index.
The ATCOR module of ERDAS Imagine provides the tools necessary to correct
the image for atmospheric effects and sensor bias, leaving values that
correspond to spectral characteristics differentially reflected from the landscape.
Vegmachine, developed and provided through the CSIRO, Perth, comprises
tools for reviewing imagery, delineating areas of interest and retrieving values
across a temporal series of overlaid images. Vegmachine presents these values
as a series of lines on a graph, each line corresponding to an area of interest.
The results can be exported to a spread-sheet for more detailed analysis.
Vegmachine is a highly useful means of efficiently reviewing and comparing
value trends.
ArcGIS is a widely used tool for generating, managing and producing spatial
information. The software allows images to be generated and overlaid with a
range of spatial data. ArcGIS is the standard spatial system within Bush
Heritage, and was used to spatially align image series, generate and represent
spatial summaries of change based on PCA and variance and present results
overlaid with local landscape features and field observations.

Examples
This project summarised and interpreted change in two ways, graphical and
spatial. The first made use of a spread sheet to collate and represent values
(figure 2). The second summarised and represented temporal change across an
entire image, able to be interpreted by overlaying a range of spatial data.

Stage one example

The first stage of the project focussed on Bush Heritage’s Eurardy reserve
(figure 1), and investigated the potential of temporal overlays of NDVI imagery
to provide information relating to the effects of conditions, events and processes
on rates and levels of growth. No attempt was made to use this imagery to
determine the identity of the vegetation communities; it was assumed that
sufficient ecological knowledge existed to establish this independently.
Eurardy reserve, located 45k inland and to the North of Geraldton, Western
Australia, lies on the fringe of the South-western wheat-belt. The property, a
wheat farm purchased by Bush Heritage in 2005, includes large areas of native
vegetation that, while historically grazed, were not considered appropriate for
crops. These areas include threatened York Gum dominated woodland
communities.
Because this property was farmed for over 2 decades, knowledge and
information relating to the character and features of the area is relatively
extensive.
This method assembled a temporal series of satellite images using the SPOT
image catalogue. Images supplied by SPOT image were then spectrally refined

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using the ATCOR module of ERDAS. NDVI values were generated using
ERDAS Imagine. Remaining spatial misalignments were corrected using the
geo-referencing capability of ArcGIS. Where possible, operations resulting in
generalising adjacent pixel values were kept to a minimum, so spatial
corrections were, where possible, undertaken as a last step.
Vegmachine was used to derive temporal trends for selected areas of interest.
The images series was converted to a BIL (band interleaved by line) format file,
with each image comprising a separate band. This file was referenced as a time
series, with areas of interest delineated using a reference image derived from
the imagery present in the time series.

1
0.9

0.8
0.7
Average NDVI

0.6

0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
December 1986

December 2000

December 2003

November 2004

December 2006

December 2007
May 1987

July 2004

July 2005

June 2006

July 2007

September 2007

July 2008
August 2005

2004 f ire 1985 f ire 1998 f ire

1992 f ire Southern control Northern control

Figure 2: NDVI value series fire affected and control areas

The graph above (figure 2), shows a temporal succession of values of areas
selected from areas showing the apparent effects of fire and two control areas
(figure 3). Values for the area circled are present as the dark blue line marked in
the legend as the 2004 fire. Until December 2003, these values are similar to
the control areas. From this date until the end of the record, the NDVI value is
consistently less than other values, including those areas affected by previous
fires. As seasonal effects inflate the overall NDVI
values of July and August, the higher level of
resources is reflected in the trend of this area, but
values remain lower. The cause of this event is
obvious. The after-effects, while evident in
succeeding images through to 2009, are apparent
in the collated NDVI levels recorded and displayed
graphically. While this example is readily visible,
the potential of this method to identify the temporal
origin of an event and to track the progress of
recovery is clear.
A comparison of imagery from before the fire, after
it and in 2009 indicates that there has been Figure 3: fire affected areas

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virtually no recovery (figures 4, 5 and 6). In addition, the change in values
appears to have occurred before the recorded fire. It is probable that the fire
occurred in late 2003, rather than 2004.
The results of the first stage presented information related to an event and its
effects as a spreadsheet comparing progressive NVDI values for a locality and
a range of reference and control areas. This example demonstrates this
process and confirms that this method can provide information able to
characterise patterns of change underlying apparent or inferred events.

Figure 4: satellite imagery Figure 5: satellite imagery Figure 6: satellite imagery

1986(SPOT) 2004(SPOT) 2009 (Landsat)

Stage 2 example
The method used for the second stage of the
project produced spatial distributions of statistics
summarising temporal change across a broad
area. In contrast to the first stage, this
information was generated independent of any
choices and selections from the observer.
Validating this source and character of
information required detailed field-work designed
to assess the relationship between this
distribution and features, events and processes
visible in the landscape.
The study area for the second stage included
the catchment of the Pallinup creek, between
the Stirling range and Fitzgerald National Park in
SW of Western Australia, and focussed on one
of Bush Heritage’s reserves: the Chereninup
Figure 7: stage 2 focus area
reserve (figure 7).
Chereninup reserve lies within an area that has been increasingly cleared and
farmed over the past decades, but remains intact. Disturbance over the last
decades has been limited to the clearance of a fire break in the 1980s.
The second stage of the project used a temporal series of SPOT imagery,
corrected and aligned in the same way as for the first stage, to generate a
single summary image able to provide information on the variations in the extent
and character of change across the area of the entire image.

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In order to review the more subtle aspects of change, summarised within a
single image, the effects of other more dominant sources of variation in the
image sequence must be minimised. Incremental and event related change
cannot be predicted and so accounted for. However, the general pattern of
seasonal change can be determined by examining annual rainfall records and
the effects compensated for by undertaking the same analysis for contrasting
seasons.

Ongerup (G-Link) - rainfall stats

60

50

40
mm

30

20

10

0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Mean Median St Devn

Figure 8: rainfall levels, Ongerup

A review of rainfall figures over the last 92 years revealed a general difference
between higher rainfall in the months between and including May and August,
and lower rainfall in the months between and including November and February
(figure 8). All analysis for the second stage was repeated for these two
“seasons”, resulting in two complementary summary images: wet season and
dry season.
Summaries of changes in NDVI images across the available imagery used
variance and Principle Component Analysis, discussed above (figures 10,11,12
and 13) as the basis for deriving images. These images were reviewed for
anomalies in the distribution of change related values. Geo-registered digital
data providing details of the distribution of vegetation structure and dominant
species, elevation, local infrastructure and aerial photography was overlaid to
establish areas for subsequent field-inspection.
An example of this approach, the theorising behind the selection and the
manner in which results added to the appreciation of an area and a process that
may not otherwise have been observed is area 2 (figure 9). The anomaly was
most apparent on the two variance images as an area of higher variance for the
wetter months and an area shifted slightly to the south for the drier months.
A review of the aerial photography for this area indicated an open area fringed
to the south by vegetation that was more uniform in canopy and denser than
other nearby vegetation. The vegetation along the southern boundary of this
open area corresponded in size and general shape to the anomaly present in
the winter variance image, while the less obvious anomaly present in the
summer variance image corresponded in general to the open area.

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 Figure 9: anomaly area 2.

Field inspection revealed an open patch of exposed and deflated yellow sandy
loam above a granite base situated on the level top of a broad ridge descending
to the southeast. The vegetation along the southern edge of the patch is dense
melaleuca hamata shrubland, contrasting in density and dominant species with
dry Allocasuarina woodland to the east and Kunzea baxterii to the west.

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Figure 10: dry season variance Figure 11: dry season PCA

Figure 12: wet season variance Figure 13: wet season PCA

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Over the 4 year summer and 6 year winter span of the temporal image
sequence, change has been more apparent in winter. This change coincides
spatially with the extent of the melaleuca shrub-land extending downhill from the
southern boundary of the open patch for 30 to 40 metres. During the drier
summer months the change, while less variant, corresponds more to the
boundaries of the patch itself. While any attempt to relate spatial
correspondence to cause and effect is risky, fieldwork was able to establish that
the open patch collected water that could be conserved on the granite underlay,
drain downhill and provide resources for the melaleuca shrub-land along the
southern boundary. The resulting periodic uptake of this water was reflected in
the variation of local NDVI derived values.
While this conclusion is subject to confirmation, it provides an example of
making use of NDVI based information to identify a process involving the
transfer of growth related resources that supplement visual information capable
of identifying the features themselves.

Conclusions
This paper has outlined two examples of the use of contrasting techniques of
compiling, representing and evaluating change in values relating to the health,
growth patterns and resource usage of plant communities. Both refer to spatial
information. Both present information relating to areas and features of the
landscape. The final part of this paper presents an assessment of the
practicality and effectiveness of the processes used by these two examples for
a not-for-profit agency of limited means.
A decade ago this summary would have been markedly different. However, in
the intervening years the costs of imagery have dropped significantly, high-end
software is available under research and non-commercial license
arrangements, and the skills necessary to appreciate spatial qualities in data
and analysis, operate spatial software and work with digital spatial information
in a range of formats have percolated into a range of ecology related and other
professions.
The amount of work required to ensure that the imagery is able to support
practical analysis is not high. Precise alignment of sequences of images is
achievable using standard spatial software supporting visual comparison of
image based features and coordinated reference points and capable of
reporting the level of precision attained.
Given that the purpose of the analysis is to allow the comparison of values
within a range of calculated NDVI indices, some flexibility exists in the level of
spectral precision capable of providing valid information. Under ideal
circumstances, atmospheric effects and sensor bias should be removed as a
matter of course. However, the information retrieved is filtered, ultimately,
through the visual acuity and experience of the user.
The usefulness of this material in field-work depends on the purpose of the
fieldwork. For this material to be used effectively, the purpose of the field-work

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must be clearly stated, whether targeted (as in reviewing and visiting known
locations for a specific activity) or general (as in establishing the spatial extent
and character of erosion, storm damage or other condition).
The use of GPS as a means of confirming location relative to vaguely defined
locality boundaries is essential, as is an effective means of transferring spatial
information between analysis software and the GPS.
The skill base required to support this work comprises: (1) accessing relevant
satellite imagery, (2) compiling imagery into formats capable of analysis, (3)
removing errors in imagery, (4) verifying and, if necessary, improving spatial
alignment across image series, (5) deriving NDVI values, (6) developing change
summary images using appropriate statistics, and (7) mapping the results
against local landscape features and infrastructure. Critically, the most
important skill is that used to relate the information produced to features,
processes and phenomena in the field.
Further work is necessary to investigate cheaper and more cost-effective
means of correcting spectral values, or to make use of available processed
NDVI image series as they become available in the future.
In general, and taking into account increasingly available resources and data
sources and the expansion of spatial awareness and skills into a broadening
range of professions, the change based imagery generated, analysed and used
in this project is a practical and cost-effective source of information for a not-for-
profit agency of limited means.

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