1. Protecting nationally threatened coastal
ecosystems through supporting volunteers
This project is supported by Cradle Coast NRM, through funding from
the Australian Government’s National Landcare Programme

2. What is Natural Resource Management?

3. Project aims
Identify
threats &
prioritise
activities
Support local
volunteer
groups
Provide spatial
analysis and
support
Environmental
outcomes

4. Who are the Circular Head Landcare Group?
• Passionate group of 15 volunteers interested in local environmental issues
• Projects include
– maintenance of coastal vegetation
– weed control and tree planting at various sites
– beach profile monitoring and shorebird counts

6. Nationally threatened coastal ecosystems
• Known as Subtropical and Temperate Coastal Saltmarsh (hereafter Saltmarsh)
• Listed as Vulnerable under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity
Conservation Act 1999
• 1,200 Ha or 20% of Tasmania
• One of the threats to saltmarsh is rice grass invasion
Source: Circular Head Region Coastal Foreshore Habitats: Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment

7. Saltmarsh - threatening processes
• Rice grass (common cord grass) replaces saltmarsh
• Changes vegetation structure
• Reduced habitat for birds
Source: Commonwealth Conservation Advice for Subtropical and Temperate Coastal Saltmarsh

9. Project Management Issues
• Timing of spraying
• Control costs are high
• Spatial extent of rice grass is unknown
• Density is variable or unknown

10. Methods
• Current state of knowledge of rice grass distribution
• Reconnaissance of rice grass distribution
• Supervised classification
• Updated results

11. Current distribution

12. Aerial Reconnaissance
Stage 1 of project with Cradle
Coast NRM from January to
June 2015.

15. Digitising
Combine datasets
Validate results
Geoprocessing steps
Image classification
Select training samples
Extract world imagery
Spatial distribution
of rice grass

16. Rice grass discovery
• Rice grass identified in Esri
World Basemap Imagery
• Utilise the World Imagery (for
Export) service to create Mosaic
Dataset.
Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015

17. Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015
Issues selecting training samples
Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015

18. Image Classification
Spectral signatures obtained from
training samples to classify an
image.
1. Select training samples (rice
grass, mud flats and water)
2. Run “Interactively Supervised
Classification”
3. Evaluate the results and export
when happy
Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015

19. Validate Results
Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015

20. Provide access to archive raw
imagery for analysis, January 10th
2014 selected
Commission WorldView-3 to
capture data this summer over
Duck Bay.
DigitalGlobe support
Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015

21. Image Comparison
April 2011 January 2014
Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015

22. Supervised classification results
April 2011 January 2014
Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015Imagery provided courtesy of DigitalGlobe, Inc. © 2015

23. Updated Results
Combine 2011 and 2014 classification datasets
Information shared with Circular Head Landcare
Group and community

24. Conclusion and the future
• Estimated primary rice grass control to cost $57,200 for Duck Bay
• Many analysis challenges encountered
• GIS is core business via the ArcGIS platform for NRM
• This summer will be exciting updating current datasets

25. End
Cradle Coast NRM GIS Gallery
http://www.cradlecoastnrm.com/GISGallery/index.html
Cradle Coast NRM on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/CradleCoastNRM
Welcome new connections via LinkedIn
https://au.linkedin.com/in/markwisniewskiau