Water observations from space: Mapping surface water from 25years of Landsat imagery across Australia

Following extreme flooding in eastern Australia in 2011, the Australian Government established a programme to improve access to flood information across Australia. As part of this, a project was undertaken to map the extent of surface water across Australia using the multi-decadal archive of Landsat satellite imagery. A water detection algorithm was used based on a decision tree classifier, and a comparison methodology using a logistic regression. This approach provided an understanding of the confidence in the water observations. The results were used to map the presence of surface water across the entire continent from every observation of 27years of satellite imagery. The Water Observation from Space (WOfS) product provides insight into the behaviour of surface water across Australia through time, demonstrating where water is persistent, such as in reservoirs, and where it is ephemeral, such as on floodplains during a flood. In addition the WOfS product is useful for studies of wetland extent, aquatic species behaviour, hydrological models, land surface process modelling and groundwater recharge. This paper describes the WOfS methodology and shows how similar time-series analyses of nationally significant environmental variables might be conducted at the continental scale. •Demonstrates a system for continental, multi-temporal analysis of satellite imagery•Analysis of Australian Landsat data from 1987 to 2014 for surface water•Details an operational, continental-scale surface water product suite•Provides a confidence assessment method for very large classifications