AusCover CALVAL: Coordinating Australian activities in calibration and validation

With the establishment of the Australian Terrestrial Environmental Research Network (TERN) and the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) Australia will significantly develop, and better coordinate, its activities in the calibration and validation (cal/val) of earth observation data in both the terrestrial and aquatic arenas. Consequently, there is the opportunity for Australia to make a systematic contribution to a range of international satellite missions. TERN will establish a cal/val program to provide for the calibration and validation of a range of land surface products. TERN AusCover is a new nationally consistent approach to collecting, validating and distributing timeseries of remote sensing-derived terrestrial land cover products to meet the requirements of ecosystem research within Australia. This paper will present a status report on calibration and validation activities in Australia. The latest developments in the TERN AusCover calibration and validation sites both proposed and established for autonomous monitoring will be outlined.