NUMBAT walk-through
NUMBAT, step by step
NUMBAT checks Queensland’s vegetation map against satellite data, every 20 m.
It shows where the map is most likely to be wrong, so field time goes where it is needed.
The Queensland Herbarium’s map of 1,435 vegetation types decides what the law protects. People draw it from aerial photos and field visits, so parts are wrong: in the Brigalow Belt, checks on the ground matched it at about half of 1,305 places. An ecologist can only visit so many places, so it matters where they look first.
This page follows one example site in the Brigalow Belt, 57 km², from drawing it to the site report. Every picture is taken from NUMBAT.
What NUMBAT can’t do
- It doesn’t draw a new map, and a single 20 m guess is often wrong.
- It learns from the map, so a type mapped wrongly in many places can mislead it.
- In South East Queensland the colours sorted right from wrong less well than in the Brigalow Belt.
- Six of Queensland’s 13 bioregions aren’t covered yet.