TERRITORY LAND VIEWER
Welcome to the Territory Vegetation Viewer for ground cover biomass. This tool has been designed to help land managers across the Northern Territory visualise the accumulation of groundcover biomass in their region, providing an additional tool for forage budgeting and to assist in the effective planning and delivery of fire management.
The primary layer in this map is Total Standing Dry Matter (TSDM), a unit of measurement commonly employed by graziers and pastoralists that estimates the availability of vegetation that sits on the ground layer in the landscape, based on satellite imagery. The primary layer can also indicate potential fire risk dependant on available dry matter. TSDM is measured in kg/ha of dry vegetation biomass, with purple indicating areas with the highest amount and red the lowest amount. The slider on the bottom of the map can also be used to visualise changes in groundcover biomass over time – simply drag the button to your dates of interest.
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Area statistics provide graphs (based on previous years) for TSDM & groundcover on the area selected. There are currently two area statistics layers with different corresponding regions for each,
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Pastoral districts
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Bioregion areas
Other layers on this map include:
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Fractional cover. Fractional cover is an index that provides an indication of the mix of ground cover in the landscape between non-greens (branches, dry grass, dead leaf litter, etc.), greens (e.g. leaves, grass, growing crops) and bare ground (e.g. soil, rock). These details enable land managers to assess risk of fire dependent on vegetation. See Figure 1 for further details.
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Coming soon....
Fire weather forecast areas. The Northern Territory has 20 fire weather forecast areas, specific regions identified by climate agencies that are issued with their own set of warnings and predictions for fire and weather conditions that could contribute to bushfires.
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Burnt areas by year. Fire scars from the last several years can be shown on the map to visualise where and at what time of year fires have burnt the landscape in previous fire seasons, which may indicate how much fuel there is likely to be in the landscape and enable better fire management for planned burns.
This viewer was created by Cibolabs in collaboration with TNRM, with funding from the Northern Drought Hub.
Figure 1. Matrix for fractional cover
