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oa The use of LiDAR data to measure the disturbance caused by a seismic survey in the Bowen Basin, Queensland, Australia
- Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists
- Source: Exploration Geophysics, Volume 56, Issue 6, Nov 2025, p. 57 - 62
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- 01 Nov 2025
Abstract
We acquired two LiDAR surveys in April 2023 and May 2024 before and after a 36 km² seismic survey that included over 1,800 km of line clearing in the Bowen Basin in central Queensland, Australia. The initial LiDAR survey was used to design the seismic survey such that its environmental impact was minimised. Prior to the seismic survey, disturbance was estimated at 3.5% using the tree fractional cover metric for vegetation with heights ≥ 5 m. Comparisons of the first and second surveys showed that the actual disturbance, again estimated using tree fractional cover, was actually -1.2%, i.e. vegetation growth had more than offset the limited areas of disturbance caused by the survey. Disturbance calculations based on identifying individual contiguous areas with a total area greater than 10 m² gave a total disturbance value of just 0.2%. These results are likely a result of a combination of an initial overestimation of the likely disturbance and vegetation growth taking place between the two surveys.