It has been possible for the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) Western Australia to enable projects to contain a historical context across a vast landscape, due to the availability of consistently processed long time sequences of Landsat imagery from the Department of Climate Change and the Land Monitor project. DEC manages 27 million hectares of land and marine waters and a part of the organization’s mission is to value, conserve and protect the environment. Monitoring using long sequences of Landsat satellite imagery is a tool which facilitates evaluation of aspects across the landscape at a medium resolution scale. The three projects presented illustrate the application of the available sequence of satellite imagery.

In the evaluation of conservation significance for basin and granite outcrop wetlands in the Avon Natural Resource Management Region, an inundation classification and salinity indication is required. An examination of the surface area of inundation and salinity indicators of wetlands throughout time provided the required inputs. Time series imagery is providing information for prescribed burning techniques in Cape Arid National Park in the south east of Western Australia, to achieve a mosaic of fire fuel ages. Buntine-Marchagee Natural Diversity Recovery Catchment has included the use of Landsat imagery to monitor vegetation in its recovery plan 2007-2027. The techniques employ ground data collected over repeated intervals to generate a vegetation cover density index.