The last day...

Today dawned even better than yesterday. Clear and calm. We packed up all the gear and our belongings and shuffled them into cars before we checked out. One team headed back to the calibration site to set it up again while the second team headed to a new site to measure and scan. The hyperspectral calibration set-up went a little more smoothly today and you can see the setup and one round of spectral collection in this video (sped up 100x).

Airborne Research Australia also flew the entire site again, taking advantage of the super clear and calm conditions. The imagery should be superb.

The survey and scanning team spend the (pretty hot) day somewhere a little cooler than the Quarry we were stationed at. This was one of the clearest sites, a little more Garna grass to shred legs but beautiful tall E. Obliqua everywhere. Look around on the Photosphere of the site below.

Today was also the day all the collected data was compiled and backed up. Trips like this are a significant investment in both time and money so it's critical that all the data collected is captured in a way so that nothing is lost, it has comprehensive metadata and becomes free to access and reuse. For most data sets we use Open Data Kit as an end-to-end collection solution. On the drive back to Hobart today our various devices automatically uploaded over 500mb of data as soon as we were back in mobile range to the Auscover ODK Aggregate server so it's safely backed up and ready to access using standard database tools. From here, it will be merged with any instrument data, checked for errors, and then uploaded to the Auscover portal for anyone to access. Cool.

So that was a wrap - the week went really well and we achieved all we set out to collect, and more. Thanks to all the team and the Forestry Tasmania folk who came down to help, discuss, lug gear, cook, wash up, climb over decaying logs, work ridiculous hours and above all have a great time, share and learn from each other.