Tuesday 2 June 2015

CBL up North

Recently a team of researchers from CSIRO traveled up to Northern QLD for a grassland biomass monitoring and satellite radar validation project. The field sites were located on the Spyglass Beef Research Facility a cattle property of approximately 100,000 hectares in size which is to be used as one of the pilot sites for the GEOGLAM-RAAP project.
Mapping out where to go next
We carried out many measurements including, soil moisture, point intercept, CBL (compact biomass lidar), destructive biomass sampling, field spectroscopy, tree structural measurements and ground cover.
Starting up the CBL for another scan.


It was very dry on the property, so more often than not the field sites didn't have much ground biomass at all, however it was a good exercise in establishing a baseline to work from and also the field protocols that we will use in the future.
Very dry and sparse vegetation courtesy being enduring 4 years of drought