ISC2010 Bare Ground Polygons for Victorian River Banks

Polygon features representing non-vegetated bank faces along Victorian rivers, mapped from 2010-2013 remote sensing data. The Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI) developed the methodology using 15cm aerial photography and multi-pulse LiDAR. Areas of bare ground smaller than 5 square meters were excluded to manage data volume.

Use Cases

• Assessing river bank erosion risk based on mapped bare ground areas.
• Monitoring riparian vegetation restoration by tracking changes in bare ground.
• Integrating with other ISC metrics for holistic river condition assessment.
• Calibrating remote sensing models for vegetation cover using ground-truth polygons.

Strengths

• Derived from high-resolution 15cm aerial photography and four return multi-pulse LiDAR.
• Polygons represent a specific metric (bare ground) for the Index of Stream Condition.
• Data volume was managed by removing features smaller than 5 square meters.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the Victorian state-wide mapping project.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action

Collection Method

Remote sensing and mapping using LiDAR and aerial photography, as described in the project report 'Aerial Remote Sensing for Physical Channel Form and Riparian Vegetation Mapping'.

Time Range

Mapping project undertaken 2010-2013.

Geography

Victoria, Australia.