11-07, 11:00– (Australia/Hobart), Main Auditorium
We present a new open-source method for mapping Australia’s dynamic coastal regions through time in unprecedented detail, using petabytes of freely available satellite imagery and open-source geospatial processing tools. Our approach can be applied to any location globally using open metadata standards and cloud-native data.
Data describing the 3D shape of our coastlines is critical for mapping vulnerable coastal ecosystems and patterns of coastal change over time. However, this data is expensive and challenging to obtain at scale using drone or aerial survey methods, resulting in a “missing link” between land-based elevation and marine bathymetry data. Freely available imagery from earth observation satellites like Landsat and Sentinel-2 represent a powerful alternative resource for mapping coastal zones across large regions and through time. However, previous applications of earth observation satellite data have been restricted to low resolution and single timesteps, limiting their ability to map highly complex and constantly changing coastal environments.
This talk will introduce Digital Earth Australia (DEA) Intertidal, a new open-source method for mapping Australia’s coastal regions in unprecedented spatial and temporal detail. Our approach combines free and open satellite imagery from Geoscience Australia’s DEA program with advanced geospatial analysis tools from the open-source Open Data Cube and DEA Tools Python packages. Our approach greatly decreases the volume of satellite imagery required to generate accurate coastal elevation models, allowing us to extract fine-scale coastal features that could not be resolved by previous mapping methods and track how Australia’s dynamic coastal regions have changed from 2016 to today.
Our approach is entirely based on open-source data and code, allowing it to be applied to any coastal location on the planet. We demonstrate how our workflows can be applied both within Australia using cloud-hosted satellite data from DEA, and externally using Microsoft Planetary Computer data loaded using STAC metadata and the Open Data Cube. Through this integration between coastal remote sensing, cloud-native data and open metadata standards, DEA Intertidal potentially provides a powerful approach for modelling and analysing dynamic coastal zones globally.
Dr Robbi Bishop-Taylor is a Coastal Earth Observation Scientist from the Digital Earth Australia Program at Geoscience Australia. At Geoscience Australia, Robbi works as part of an interdisciplinary team responsible for developing the first continent-wide maps of Australia’s vast intertidal zone, and the Digital Earth Australia Coastlines dataset that maps Australia’s dynamic coastline using three decades of satellite imagery.