Project Status: Complete
Project Participants: Alcoa, CSIRO
Project Leader: Cindy Ong (CSIRO)
This project seeks to investigate the feasibility of providing a spatially comprehensive monitoring technique using airborne hyperspectral technology that can identify and quantify the distribution of bauxite residuals (Alkaloam®) and it’s effectiveness as a soil amendment. During the pilot phase, field samples were collected from sites with varying levels of Alkaloam® as well as background soil material. The data was analysed and it was determined that Alkaloam® is spectrally separable from background soil materials typical of the farmed lands in the Perth Basin.
Spectral sensing theoretically can determine the physiological conditions of vegetation through the ability to measure such conditions as the photosynthetic activity, leaf structure, the levels of leaf water and biochemicals such as chlorophyll, lignin and cellulose. These conditions may be caused by a multitude of issues ranging from natural climatic variations to the Alkaloam® and a comprehensive study is being undertaken to further this knowledge. This project is now focussed on the acquisition of airborne data over the selected areas where Alkaloam® is known to have been applied. This will demonstrate the capabilities of hyperspectral scanning to produce spatial maps of Alkaloam® distributions.