Flood Mapping

Cooper Creek Flood Mapping Using Landsat MSS

The objective of this study was to assess the flood area extents from known amounts of floodwater flowing through the Cooper Creek system from Queensland to Lake Eyre, SA. The project used a total of 12 Landsat MSS images from different time periods. Landsat MSS was chosen for this study because of its low cost, 80m resolution, and the presence of two near-infrared bands which were used to detect standing water.

Imagery was acquired in periods identified to be representative of flooding. A single image representing "dry" conditions was acquired as well. This image was used to provide a baseline of standing water (ie. the minimum amount of water normally present), any increase to this standing water was assumed to be due to flooding.

An unsupervised classification was used to classify each scene into 'flood' and 'non-flood' classes. The 'flood' class was based on standing water and the vegetation flush after flooding receded. Areas outside the basin, such as the co-temporal Warburton floods, were also delineated. Permanent standing water was identified using the dry year scene and was used to mask out the`se areas on the flood scenes. Swamps were not masked out as it was uncertain whether there was water and vegetation or just vegetation.

An example of the resultant classification are displayed below. Yellow areas represent areas of flooding, while black indicates areas of non-flooding.

Click on the images for a more detailed view.
1990 Cooper Creek Image	1990 Cooper Creek Classification
1991 Cooper Creek Image	1991 Cooper Creek Classification