Landsat 5 Satellite Imagery for Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait, 1988-2011

59 Landsat 5 images processed for low cloud cover and clear water, covering selected areas of Queensland's Torres Strait, Lizard Island, and Cape Tribulation. The collection was developed by the eAtlas AIMS under the NERP TE 13.1 project, sourced from NASA's Landsat archive via Google Earth Engine. Images were processed into true-color GeoTIFFs with consistent level adjustments and cover a period from 1988 to 2011.

Use Cases

• Monitor coastal erosion and sediment transport based on multi-temporal true-color imagery.
• Analyze seasonal water clarity and color variations based on images selected for clear water conditions.
• Map marine habitats like coral reefs and seagrass beds based on low-cloud-cover satellite scenes.
• Study long-term environmental changes in the Great Barrier Reef region based on imagery spanning over two decades.

Strengths

• 59 images were specifically selected for low cloud cover and clear water, enhancing usability for marine studies.
• Imagery spans over two decades (1988-2011), providing a multi-temporal perspective.
• Images are processed as lossless LZW-compressed GeoTIFFs with an alpha channel for transparency and a defined WGS 84 UTM 54N projection.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale automated analysis.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• A constant level adjustment was applied regardless of season, which may cause summer images to appear brighter than winter ones, potentially affecting cross-seasonal comparisons.

Provenance

Source

NASA Landsat 5 archive, accessed via Google Earth Engine and processed by eAtlas AIMS (Australian Institute of Marine Science).

Collection Method

Images were downloaded, processed for true color using GDAL with specific channel adjustments, and selected for quality.

Time Range

1988-2011

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-16 03:15:22.531532; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Selected areas of Queensland, Australia, including Torres Strait, Lizard Island, and Cape Tribulation.