SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING BASED MEASURES OF

RIPARIAN VEGETATION STATUS

a* a b b
Kathryn Sheffield , Mohammad Abuzar , Des Whitfield , Andy McAllister ,
Mark O’Connellb, Lexie McClymontb
a
Department of Primary Industries, Parkville, Victoria
b
Department of Primary Industries, Tatura, Victoria
*kathryn.sheffield@dpi.vic.gov.au

Abstract
Riparian vegetation represents significant areas of water use in landscapes. An
understanding of hydrology and vegetation dynamics within riparian zones is
important for the development of ecologically appropriate management plans
for these complex systems. To achieve this, measures of vegetation extent,
health and activity are required, as these provide important information about
the status of riparian vegetation. This paper demonstrates the ability of
remotely sensed data to provide information about vegetation extent, health,
and water use.
This study shows that remotely sensed data provide repeatable, objective
measurements of riparian vegetation status. The ability of remotely sensed
data to provide information as a time series creates the capacity to identify
temporal changes and trends in vegetation status as well as provide information
at a single point in time. Satellite imagery also provides information on the
spatial distribution of these variables, which offers valuable insight into the
diversity present within the ecosystem. These factors all provide important
information for the management of riparian systems.

Introduction
This study aimed to develop measurement and monitoring tools that addressed
extent, health and activity of significant riparian sites in southern Australia. This
paper demonstrates how measures of riparian vegetation extent, health and
water use can be derived from remotely sensed data, and how these data can
potentially improve management of these systems.

Background information
Riparian vegetation represents significant areas of water use and loss from
landscapes. An understanding of hydrology and vegetation dynamics within
riparian zones is important for the development of ecologically appropriate and
effective management plans for these complex systems (Chong and Ladson
2003, Lawrence and Colloff 2008). Information on water use within these
systems is also of interest as issues such as environmental flows and river
water diversions become more prominent. To provide this information,
affordable and objective monitoring and reporting tools are required.

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The ecological condition and status of riparian vegetation has been linked with
water use and availability (Stromberg et al. 2006). Riparian vegetation also
represents areas of significant water use in landscapes (Dahm et al. 2002,
Cleverly et al. 2006). Therefore an understanding of riparian vegetation water
consumption and its spatial distribution within riparian zones is important.
There are many different measures that can be used as indicators of vegetation
status and activity. This study used measures of evapotranspiration (ET) and
vegetation biomass (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index: NDVI), in addition
to vegetation extent. The extent of riparian vegetation is a fundamental
measure of human and other impacts on the size and amount of riparian
vegetation at a given time. In addition to extent, measures of vegetation health
and activity provide important information about the state of riparian vegetation,
including vegetation health and levels of ecosystem functionality.
Remotely sensed data provide not only measures of vegetation status, but also
provide information on the spatial distribution of variables within the riparian
zone, which offers valuable insight into the diversity present within the
ecosystem.

Study area
The study area is located in south-east Australia, along the Murray River which
forms the Victorian-New South Wales border. This study uses two riparian
areas to demonstrate the utility of remotely sensed data for retrieving
vegetation status information. The first area is the Barmah-Millewa Forest
which is located adjacent to the Murray River near the town of Echuca in
northern central Victoria. The second is the Hattah Lakes complex which is
located approximately 300km downstream of the Barmah-Millewa Forest, near
the town of Robinvale. Both sites are located within the Murray-Darling Basin.
These wetlands have been identified as Living Murray environmental icon sites
by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, and were identified for their
environmental, cultural, and international significance. Both areas are listed
under the international Ramsar wetland protection convention and are included
in several international migratory bird conservation agreements. The ecology of
these systems is heavily influenced by surface flows, groundwater sources and
flood events, which have been significantly altered by human activity.
Hydrological changes are recognised as key risks to these systems (Chong and
Ladson 2003, Eamus et al. 2006, MDBC 2006a, MDBC 2006b), and changes
within the riparian areas in response to these risks highlights the need for
monitoring and reporting tools dealing with vegetation extent, health and
activity.

Methods
In this paper, measures of riparian vegetation extent, health and activity are
derived from multi-spectral remotely sensed data.

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Deriving vegetation extent from remotely sensed data
Extent is a fundamental measure of vegetation and allows the presence or
absence of vegetation in the landscape to be measured and monitored. For the
purposes of spatially delineating riparian vegetation in this study, the outer
extent of the riparian zone was defined.
All imagery used to derive vegetation extent was Landsat 5 TM imagery
sourced from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat archive. Areas of
known land cover were identified in each image, including: riparian vegetation,
other woody vegetation, irrigated agriculture, dryland agriculture, and water.
The spectral separability of each class was then examined using a Jeffries-
Matusita statistic. The statistic ranges from 0 to 2, with values above a
threshold of 1.9 indicating a good degree of separability between classes (RSI
2005, Richards and Jia 2006).
A supervised classification (maximum likelihood algorithm) was used to classify
the imagery. To produce a single outer extent line, the classification was
manually edited to remove errors and inconsistencies within the classified area.
This process was completed for three different images acquired during October
and November 2008 (path/row 93/85, 94/84, 95/84) to produce a single riparian
zone extent along the Murray River. Each image was processed
independently.

Deriving measures of vegetation activity and health from remotely sensed data
In this study, joint measures of NDVI and ET are used to provide a
comprehensive measure of vegetation health and activity, supplementing
information on the extent of riparian vegetation in the landscape. All imagery
used to derive NDVI and ET measures were Landsat 5 TM imagery sourced
from the USGS Landsat archive. Cloud-free images located over the Barmah-
Millewa Forest and the Hattah Lakes area (path/row 93/85 and 95/84
respectively) were acquired between November 2008 and March 2009.
NDVI is used as one measure of vegetation status and activity. NDVI is one of
the more commonly applied vegetation indices and is calculated using near
infrared (NIR) and red reflectance. The index has been shown to respond to
levels of green biomass, leaf chlorophyll content and vegetation water stress
(Jensen 2000, Liang 2004). It is calculated as:

NDVI = NIR – Red / NIR + Red

ET was also used as a measure of vegetation status and activity. ET can be

used to identify patterns of water use within vegetated areas. The relationship
between NDVI and ET also illustrates the dependence of vegetation biomass
on water use, and can be used to identify potential causal effects of changes in
vegetation health. One approach to the estimation of ET from remotely sensed
data uses estimates of surface energy balance components to derive
estimations of ET based on latent heat flux (LE) measurements (Bastiaanssen
et al. 2005, Glenn et al. 2007).

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The surface energy balance equation is given as:

LE = Rn – G – H
2
Where: LE = latent heat flux (W/m )
2
Rn = net radiation flux at the surface (W/m )
G = soil heat flux (W/m2)
2
H = sensible heat flux to the air (W/m )

LE represents the residual energy available for ET. The approach taken in this
study to estimate ET from remotely sensed data follows the SEBAL
(Bastiaanssen et al. 1998, Bastiaanssen 2000) and METRIC (Allen et al. 2007)
models. These approaches use remotely sensed data and minimal ground
data (including some meteorological observations) to estimate components of
the surface energy balance equation. A requirement of the remotely sensed
data is the availability of thermal information (e.g. Landsat 5 TM Band 6).
Reference ET, representing ET from a standardised well-watered, full
vegetation cover surface was calculated independently following methods
published in Allen et al. (1988). Reference ET is used to provide an anchor
point for ET calculations made across the remainder of the image. ET values in
this paper are presented as a reference ET fraction (ETrF), calculated as ET
2 2
(LE W/m ) divided by reference ET (W/m ) (Allen et al. 2005). This calculation
gives a standardised measure of ET. ETrF values of near zero represent little
or no ET. ETrF values of approximately one indicate near-maximal ET rates.
ETrF values above one indicate ET rates exceeding the expected maximal ET
level, generally due to wet surface soil conditions or the presence of surface
water.

Results
In this study, remotely sensed data were used to delineate areas of riparian
vegetation. The use of remotely sensed data reduced the need to manually
delineate areas of riparian vegetation. Spectral information also provided an
independent justification for the inclusion or exclusion of vegetation within the
riparian zone, reducing the subjectivity involved in the process, and applied a
consistent definition across administrative boundaries.
In terms of spectrally distinguishing different land cover classes, all class pairs
were above the nominated statistical threshold of 1.9, except for the pairing of
riparian vegetation and other woody vegetation, which had a Jeffries-Matusita
value of 1.6. This suggests that there will be minimal misclassification, except
between woody vegetation and riparian vegetation classes. This information
was used to create a supervised classification of the image. The aim of this
process was to identify a single boundary of the extent of riparian vegetation in

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the landscape, within which more detailed analyses could be undertaken. To
achieve a single boundary line that indicated the outer extent of the riparian
zone, some parts of the classified image were manually edited to remove errors
and inconsistencies within areas classified as riparian vegetation.
To delineate the riparian zone along the Murray River, three images were
processed independently. However, where two images spatially overlapped,
the classification of riparian vegetation covered coincident areas on the two
images, demonstrating a general level of consistency in the application of this
method across different areas of the landscape. This method produced a
single spatial riparian zone extent across the study area. However, it highlights
that the process is not fully automated and requires some knowledge of the
area of interest and user corrections to produce a final consistent layer.
The calculated ETrF and NDVI data provide a range of information on the
health and activity of the two riparian systems incorporated in this study.
Summary statistics for the two environmental icon sites are presented in Table
1. These data are shown for each image used for this study and demonstrate
the variation in status and activity of riparian vegetation over time and at
different geographical locations.

Table 1. Summary statistics of NDVI and ETrF for the Barmah-Millewa Forest and
Hattah Lakes area
Icon site Acquisition date Mean NDVI Mean ETrF
Barmah-Millewa Forest 04/11/2008 0.31 0.57
Barmah-Millewa Forest 23/01/2009 0.31 0.57
Barmah-Millewa Forest 24/02/2009 0.34 0.53
Barmah-Millewa Forest 28/03/2009 0.36 0.73
Hattah Lakes 20/12/2008 0.19 0.37
Hattah Lakes 05/01/2009 0.19 0.33

These statistics show that mean NDVI and ETrF values were lower in the
Hattah Lakes area compared with the Barmah-Millewa Forest, which is located
further upstream. The data show a general increase in both NDVI and ETrF
values between summer and autumn images for the Barmah-Millewa Forest,
and a slight decrease in NDVI and ETrF values from December to January for
the Hattah Lakes area. Further investigation is required to determine factors
contributing to these changes, such as vegetation type, water availability and
climatic conditions.
The spatial distribution of NDVI and ETrF, for a section of the Barmah-Millewa
Forest is shown in Figure 1. These maps highlight the patchy spatial
distribution of vegetation growth within the riparian zone, indicating differing
levels of water availability and consumption within the riparian zone. This type
of analysis enables the effect of flooding and the spatial distribution of water
use and requirements within the riparian zone to be determined.

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Figure 1. Spatial distribution of riparian vegetation characteristics within the Barmah-
Millewa Forest, illustrated using the following: (a) NDVI and (b) ETrF (Landsat 5 TM,
path/row 93/85: 4/11/2008)

The interpretation of actual values of ET and NDVI in conjunction with spatial

data enhances the information derived from remotely sensed data. Figure 2a
shows NDVI and ETrF values for the Hattah Lakes complex. The graph shows
several distinct growth and water use patterns within the data. The data
highlighted in blue have low NDVI values but high ETrF values, while the data
highlighted in green have increasingly high NDVI values but lower ETrF values.
These relationships are representative of the mixture of plant species present in
these zones and their varying density, leaf characteristics, canopy
characteristics, and phenology (Roberts and Marston 2000, Drexler et al. 2004).
The use of remotely sensed data enables these patterns to be linked to
landscape features to assist in the interpretation of the data. The data falling
within the two zones of interest were then spatially plotted, as shown on the
grey-scale image in Figure 2b. Figure 2c shows a false colour composite image
of the same area. Representation of the data in formats shown in Figure 2
assists with data interpretation, and show that the blue arm of the data is
associated with areas of open water and wetlands, while the green arm of the
data is located around the edges of these wetlands, where wetland associated
vegetation such as sedges, lignum, and river red gum trees are located.

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Figure 2. Water use patterns within the Hattah Lakes area, linking values of NDVI and
ETrF to their spatial distribution within the landscape. This figure shows (a) the
relationship between ETrF and NDVI, highlighting patterns of interest in green and
blue, (b) the spatial distribution of these two patterns of interest, and, (c) a false colour
composite image of the same area shown in (b) (green, red, NIR bands, Landsat 5
TM, path/row 95/84: 20/12/2008)

Discussion
The results presented in this paper demonstrate the range of information
remotely sensed data can provide about riparian vegetation status across
landscapes. Summary statistics, such as those presented above, provide a
quick snapshot of changes in general water use and vegetation growth within
these areas. The ability of remotely sensed data to provide consistent
information at repeated time intervals also provides useful information that can
reveal long-term trends in the status of riparian vegetation.
The spatial distribution of vegetation activity and water use offers additional
information to statistical summaries. This is of particular interest in riparian
systems as they are often heterogeneous environments. The interpretation of
NDVI and ETrF values in conjunction with the spatial information remotely
sensed data provide allows similar areas in the landscape, in terms of
vegetation growth and water use to be identified, which is useful for defining
specific management actions and management zones. This type of analysis
enables patterns of interest in the data to be visualised and linked to landscape
features to assist in the interpretation of the data.
Spatial information can identify areas of concern or interest within the riparian
system, which can provide additional insight for the management of water
distribution and access within the riparian zone, particularly when interpreted in
conjunction with additional spatial layers such as surface water location and
floodwater extent.
There are several opportunities to expand the work presented in this paper to
enable a comprehensive analysis of water use within the Murray River riparian

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zone. The data presented in this paper are given as an instantaneous
snapshot of the riparian system at the time of image acquisition. Modelling
processes can be used to expand these measurements to cover longer time
periods. An analysis of linkages between different sources of vegetation status
data (including ground-, airborne-, and satellite-based measurements) would
provide important information in terms of confidence in the remotely sensed
data measurements and interpretation of the results.
The ET and NDVI data derived for this study could also be used within a larger
framework to determine water requirements within the riparian zone, and water
use within different areas of the catchment. A detailed analysis of variations
within the identified riparian vegetation extent, particularly of individual
vegetation types, would also be valuable for the interpretation of results and
would assist in identifying vegetation growth and health patterns. This type of
analysis may aid in the identification of areas and trends of concern and
identifying vegetation management requirements within different zones of the
riparian system.

Conclusion
An understanding of hydrology and vegetation dynamics within riparian zones is
important for the development of ecologically appropriate management plans
for these complex systems. To achieve this, repeatable, objective
measurements of vegetation health and water use are required, which the ET
and NDVI information derived from satellite imagery appears to provide.
The work presented in this paper demonstrates the utility of remotely sensed
data for the measurement and monitoring of vegetation health and activity in
riparian systems. Satellite imagery also provides information on the spatial
distribution of vegetation health and activity, which offers valuable insight into
the diversity present within the ecosystem, as the data depicts the variation
within and between riparian areas. Spatially representing vegetation activity
and status using remotely sensed data allows the distribution of water use and
potential requirements within the riparian zone to be investigated. These
factors all provide important information for the management of riparian
systems.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Department of Primary Industries, the
Department of Sustainability and Environment, the National Water Commission
and the CRC Irrigation Futures and was undertaken for the project
‘Measurement, monitoring and reporting systems for improved water
management at farm-regional scales in Australia’. Cress Savige provided a
substantial amount of IDL code to process the imagery used for this project.

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