Foliage Projective Cover Report
What is a foliage projective cover report?
Foliage projective cover (FPC) is the percentage of ground area occupied by the vertical projection of the foliage of woody vegetation. Woody vegetation can have a major impact on grass production. FPC is considered to give a better indication of the influence of woody vegetation on grass productivity than tree basal area (TBA). This is because FPC is more closely related to light interception and tree water use.
What is included in this report?
The foliage projective cover report includes:
- A map showing FPC calculated from satellite imagery overlain on Lot on Plan boundaries
- A map showing Grazing Land Management (GLM) land types
- A summary of FPC statistics for each GLM land type within the Lot on Plan
- A GeoPDF file showing georeferenced data that relates an image from the PDF report to coordinates on a map - allowing the user to have some limited mapping functions such as turning map layers on and off. The GeoPDF for this report can be used in applications such as Avenza maps or Adobe Acrobat.
Note: there are no legends on the geoPDF files. To understand the categories when you are using the geoPDFs onsite, you need to reference the legend on the pdf report (digital or printed).
Report sample
Report sample is available online here .
Common questions about foliage projective cover reports
Foliage Projective Cover (FPC) is defined as the vertically projected percentage cover of photosynthetic foliage from green trees and shrubs taller than two metres.
For a selected Lot on Plan or adjoining Lots on Plan in Queensland:
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The report shows tree and shrub Foliage Projective Cover (FPC) classes modelled from satellite imagery.
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The purpose of modelling is to minimise the influence of grass cover on FPC estimates and ‘smooth’ short term fluctuations in FPC due, for example, to wet or dry conditions (Kitchen, et al. 2010).
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The report provides a summary of FPC statistics for each Grazing Land Management (GLM) land type within the Lot(s) on Plan. For more details, see Pages 21 to 22 of the FORAGE User Guide .
This report provides satellite derived FPC in four classes, for each GLM land type, on the selected Lot(s) on Plan.
Tree Basal Area (TBA) is the cross-sectional area of all the trees at breast height per hectare. FPC of 15, 30 and 70 per cent equate to a TBA of approximately six, 12 and 32 square metres per hectare for mature tree communities.
