Monthly Ground Cover Fractions for Queensland at 30-Meter Resolution

Supplying monthly raster images of ground cover fractions for Queensland from 2017 to present. Each pixel contains three bands representing the percent cover of bare ground, green vegetation, and non-green vegetation at a 30-meter resolution. The data is produced by Queensland's Remote Sensing Centre using a blended algorithm from Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.

Use Cases

• Analyze temporal trends in bare ground fraction to monitor land degradation or drought impacts across Queensland.
• Model green vegetation fraction dynamics for agricultural yield forecasting or ecosystem health assessment.
• Calculate non-green vegetation fraction to study seasonal litterfall, fire fuel loads, or post-fire recovery.
• Integrate the three fractional cover bands to create composite vegetation indices for land cover classification.

Strengths

• Monthly temporal resolution provides data for seasonal and inter-annual analysis.
• Spatial resolution of 30 meters per pixel allows for detailed landscape-scale mapping.
• Continuous coverage from 2017 to present enables long-term trend analysis.
• Data is derived from two satellite sources (Landsat and Sentinel-2), potentially improving temporal consistency.

Limitations

• The dataset is limited to the geographic area of Queensland, Australia.
• The 30-meter resolution may be insufficient for analyzing small-scale features like individual fields in fragmented landscapes.
• The product is derived from other fractional cover products, inheriting any limitations from those source datasets.

Provenance

Source

Queensland's Remote Sensing Centre, via the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network's Data Discovery portal.

Collection Method

Derived algorithmically from blended Landsat-based and Sentinel-2-based fractional cover products.

Time Range

2017 to present.

Freshness

Updated monthly; last metadata update was 2026-03-20.

Geography

Queensland, Australia.