Land use

"The purpose to which the land cover is committed. Some land uses, such as agriculture, have a characteristic land cover pattern. These usually appear in land cover classifications. Other land uses, such as nature conservation, are not readily discriminated by a characteristic land cover pattern. For example, where the land cover is woodland, the land use may be timber production, grazing or nature conservation." (Australian Government, 2019) 

Sources

Australian Government. 'Definitions', in Land Management, Department of Agriculture and Water Resources. Accessed March 3, 2019. Available at: http://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/aclump/definitions

Related Content

Article

Monitoring runoff using Earth observation data

When rain falls on Earth, the water starts moving and flowing downhill through sewers and rivers as runoff. Runoff is extremely important to recharge surface water bodies and groundwater. Furthermore, runoff changes the landscape by action of erosion. It is an integral part of the water cycle (Earth Science Data Systems 2021). 

Interview with Webster Gumindoga, PhD Student at University of Twente and Lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe

Webster is a PhD student at the University of Twente’s Faculty of Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation. His PhD thesis is entitled: Observing Zambezi Basin from Space: Satellite based bias correction for hydrological modelling: Webster is also lecturer and researcher at the University of Zimbabwe’s Construction and Civil Engineering Department. He is the coordinator of the regional master’s degree programme in Integrated Water Resources Management, a capacity building programme for the water sector in Southern and Eastern Africa. His research interests are in the areas of GIS and Earth Observation applications in water resources management, sanitation, water quality and disaster management. He is also a consultant who has been seconded as a GIS mentor to many government institutions and developmental partners in Southern Africa. Webster has over 60 publications, numerous regional and international conference papers in areas of spatial and quantitative hydrology, water resources management, quantification of water cycle components and feedbacks between climate, land-uses, water cycles and other societal influences. Webster is the Chief Editor of the Journal of Environmental Management in Zimbabwe (JEMZ).

Interview with Webster Gumindoga, PhD Student at University of Twente and Lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe

Webster is a PhD student at the University of Twente’s Faculty of Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation. His PhD thesis is entitled: Observing Zambezi Basin from Space: Satellite based bias correction for hydrological modelling: Webster is also lecturer and researcher at the University of Zimbabwe’s Construction and Civil Engineering Department. He is the coordinator of the regional master’s degree programme in Integrated Water Resources Management, a capacity building programme for the water sector in Southern and Eastern Africa. His research interests are in the areas of GIS and Earth Observation applications in water resources management, sanitation, water quality and disaster management. He is also a consultant who has been seconded as a GIS mentor to many government institutions and developmental partners in Southern Africa. Webster has over 60 publications, numerous regional and international conference papers in areas of spatial and quantitative hydrology, water resources management, quantification of water cycle components and feedbacks between climate, land-uses, water cycles and other societal influences. Webster is the Chief Editor of the Journal of Environmental Management in Zimbabwe (JEMZ).

Launch of Zimbabwe's first Satellite ZIMSAT - 1

What began as the development of a cubesat (BIRD-5) at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan took off on a spacecraft to the International Space Station from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, US on 6 November 2022 (watch the video of the launch of the CRS2 NG-18 (Cygnus) Mission (Antares), in the video below the article).

Event

Local Perspectives Case Studies

Person

Software/Tool/(Web-)App

LandMonitoring.Earth

At the occasion of the ‘European Land Monitoring at its crossroads’ conference held in Innsbruck, Austria, in October 2018, GeoVille has released an update of the LandMonitoring.Earth public portal.

Earth Observation Data Analysis Library

Imagery from Earth observing (EO) satellites combined with environmental data about climate, topography and soils holds great potential to advance our knowledge about the dynamics of our planet. Still, the handling and analysis of these data sources is cumbersome and presents a high barrier to entry leaving the potential of EO data underexploited.

Space-based Solution

Collaborating actors (stakeholders, professionals, young professionals or Indigenous voices)
Suggested solution

Note: this description is work in progress developed by the collaborating entities in a workshop. If you would like to contribute reach out to office@space4water.org, or your trusted Space4Water point of contact.

1. Data collection

To collect historic and high-resolution up-to-date imagery over the area, UNOOSA contacted the Land and Information New Zealand Data Service, which provided both historic aerial imagery and LIDAR data sources.

Historic data for the relevant land patch can be accessed via the Retrolens New Zealand Service.

Up-to-date aerial photos of the area can be accessed here at the New Zealand Data Service. Tile 503 and 603 are the ones of interest.

Relevant Landsat data available from 1989. For the study area, Landsat 7 data is available from 2 July 1999, and Landsat 4 from 2 February 1989.

HydroSHEDS: The core data products of HydroSHEDS are a series of gridded datasets designed for use in hydro-environmental model development and custom GIS applications. Data layers include the original digital elevation model (DEM) that underpins HydroSHEDS, a hydrologically conditioned version of the DEM, the derived flow direction and flow accumulation grids, as well as land mask and sink grids. These data products form the digital foundation of the derived secondary data products. HydroSHEDS core data products are currently available for HydroSHEDS v1 only, which is mostly based on SRTM elevation data. HydroSHEDS v2, which is derived from TanDEM-X elevation data, is currently under development and is scheduled for release in 2022.

A digital elevation model (DEM) is available at 30m resolution by Copernicus is availble at the Terrascope website.

2. Vegetation identification

Using NDVI allows for identifying the type of vegetation but not the specific species. One can see whether the type of vegetation has changed from trees to grassland, but specific plants cannot be seen.

Retrolense provides aerial photographs taken from an airplane at which the relevant bands for NDVI calcluation (infrared and red) are missing.

We can examine vegetation cover over the last 30+ years using NDVI with Landsat data.

For future reference/documentation purposes, if the Maori community can conduct a community survey in which elders are asked for tree or animal species on the land for the past 40 to 50 years, it can be benficial. These could be used as ground data.

A study called Aerial photography for assessing vegetation change: a review of applications and the relevance of findings for Australian vegetation history by Fensham and Fairfax published in 2022 in the Australian Journal of Botany and on the CSIRO page is accessible here.

 

Links to Space4Water resources that are part of the solution
Keywords (for the solution)
Climate Zone (addressed by the solution)
Habitat (addressed by the solution)
Region/Country (the solution was designed for, if any)
Relevant SDGs