Seasonal Persistent Green - Landsat, JRSRP Algorithm, Australia Coverage 

Image Pre-Processing: All input Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI imagery was downloaded from the USGS EarthExplorer website as level L1T imagery. Images which the EarthExplorer site rated as having greater than 80% cloud cover were not downloaded. The imagery has been corrected for atmospheric effects, and bi-directional reflectance and topographic effects, using the methods detailed by Flood et al (2013). The result is surface reflectance standardised to a fixed viewing and illumination geometry. Cloud, cloud shadow and snow have been masked out using the Fmask automatic cloud mask algorithm. Topographic shadowing has been masked using the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission DEM at 30 m resolution. Water has been masked out using the methods outlines in Danaher & Collett (2006). 

Fractional Cover Model: The bare soil, green vegetation and non-green vegetation endmembers for the combination of Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-7 are calculated using models linked to an intensive field sampling program whereby more than 1500 sites covering a wide variety of vegetation, soil and climate types were sampled to measure overstorey and ground cover following the procedure outlined in Muir et al (2011).A constrained linear spectral unmixing is applied to the image archive using the derived endmembers and has an overall model Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 11.6%. Values are reported as percentages of cover plus 100. The fractions stored in the 4 image layers are: Band1 - bare (bare ground, rock, disturbed), Band2 - green vegetation, Band3 - non green vegetation (litter, dead leaf and branches), Band4 - Model fitting error. 

Seasonal Compositing: The method of compositing used selection of representative pixels through the determination of the medoid (multi-dimensional equivalent of the median) of three months (a season) of fractional cover imagery. The medoid is the point which minimises the total distance between the selected point and all other points. Thus the selected point is “in the middle” of the set of points. The value selected is a specific data point and not an averaged or blended value. It is robust against extreme values, inherently avoiding the selection of outliers, such as occurs when cloud or cloud shadow goes undetected. At least three pixels from the time-series of imagery for the season must be available. Unfortunately, due to the high level of cloud cover in some areas, often three cloud free pixels are not available, resulting in data gaps in the seasonal fractional cover image. For further details on this method see Flood (2013). 

Persistent Green Fractional Cover: Smoothing splines are fitted in multiple iterations per pixel through the full time series of seasonal fractional cover (green fraction only). At each iteration, zero weight is given to observations that lie above the spline, and observation below the line are weighted proportion to the size of the residual. Observations greater than 3 standard deviations from the residual mean are given zero weight, and those between 2 and 3 standard deviations are given less weight, this avoids contamination by outliers. Persistent green fractional cover for each season is estimated from the final spline iteration at each seasonal time step. Values reported are as for fractional cover, ie. percentages of cover plus 100. Areas with frequent seasonal fractional cover data gaps due to cloud may produce unreliable estimates of persistent green cover. A single band (byte) image is produced: persistent green vegetation cover (in percent) + 100