A Technique for Near-Ground Remote Sensing of Herbaceous Vegetation in Tropical Woodlands.

Cost-effective, accurate, repeatable methods for assaying characteristics of vegetative communities are critical for developing management strategies for grasslands in dry tropical Australia. We outline a set of flexible and adaptable techniques that will allow the description of plant canopy cover, bare ground, and standing crop through near-ground remote sensing. The system consists of a gantry frame and telescoping boom arm mounted on a quad bike, digital camera (or analog camera using slide film) to capture plot images, Leica TClOlO total station (electronic theodolite with data capture card) to measure distance and bearings to centres of imaged plots, and a suite of readily available software packages to process the images. During 1997, data were collected from three experimental paddocks in different stages of degradation within a dry tropical woodland located near Charters Towers, Queensland. Comparisons of data quality and time requirements for digital and standard field estimation techniques (BOTANAL) are made, and the strengths and weaknesses of the two systems discussed.