Infrastructure Engineering - Theses
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ItemEucalypt leaf-flush detection from remotely sensed (MODIS) data( 2011)The apiary industry in Australia is unique from the rest of the world in that it is dependent upon tree species to provide the nectar for honey production, whereas the rest of the world utilises meadow vegetation and shrub species for nectar supply. Consequently, the apiary industry in Australia relies upon the ecosystem-dominant eucalypt trees within closed-forest, forest, open-forest, and woodland environments that have more complex ecosystem interactions than the meadow and shrub ecosystems outside Australia. Therefore, the Australian apiarists are dependent upon acquiring knowledge of greater complexity pertaining to forest ecosystem dynamics, such as including successional-ecology, interactions with different understorey community types, herbivory defoliation-events, and fire. This study has found it is possible to detect changes in vegetation indices over successive images, and between seasons, to correlate with honey-yield data. The supplied honey-yield data is used as a covariate for flowering intensity of eucalypt communities. Due to the lack of numerical honey-yield data (the supplied data was categorical/ordinal), modelling of the remote sensing vegetation indices with honey yield could not be done, and the analyses rely upon interpretation of graphical and rate-of-change values. This Master-by-Coursework project is a preliminary component of a larger project attempting to find a method of predicting flowering intensity of eucalypt ecosystems, and therefore potential honey yield, using the freely-available MODIS data. The data used for this project was the NDVI, EVI, Pixel Reliability, and VI Quality information extracted from images accessed from the MOD13Q1 product. With access to numerical honey-yield data, and weather and ecosystem data (available from the Bureau of Meteorology and the Department of Sustainability and Environment respectively), along with the MODIS data, it should be possible to perform a detailed analyses using multiple-regression techniques to model the flowering intensity of eucalypt ecosystems based upon prior leaf-flushing events. Predicting potential honey yield from MODIS data coupled with weather and ecosystem data will allow apiarists to determine the most likely site and time to place their beehives in order to maximise production.