Completed project
Identifying and quantifying turfgrass groundcover in urban areas using online satellite imagery (TU13027)
Publication date: October 29, 2014
Delivery Partner: BioScience Australia
Natural turfgrass offers a number of significant environmental benefits, including the ability to cool urban landscapes, sequester carbon, prevent erosion and improve air quality.
This project was conducted in 2013/14 to develop a new method of identifying and quantifying turfgrass cover in urban areas.
Following a literature review of possible methods, researchers chose the i‐Tree Canopy online program to use in combination with Google Earth to map suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne and assess turf type and coverage. The technique successfully surveyed 32 suburbs in all and found that turfgrass coverage decreased substantially in built up areas with high density living, in both cities.
While the findings are not surprising, the study showed that the method is capable of capturing data to help decision-makers regarding where turfgrass would be of benefit for city dwellers.
This project was a strategic levy investment in the Hort Innovation Turf Fund
© 2026 Horticulture Innovation Australia Limited.
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