Background
Tim Whiteside is a remote sensing scientist within the ERISS Ecosystem Restoration and Landform team. Tim’s main research expertise is in analysing high and very high spatial resolution remotely sensed imagery to characterise vegetative land cover within tropical landscapes, including savanna and wetlands. This includes the extraction of tree crown information, proportional cover estimation, community mapping and species identification. Tim’s current research focus is the use of drones or remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) for mapping and monitoring of mine site rehabilitation including revegetation success. This has involved flying drones and acquiring ultra-high resolution remote sensing data using multispectral, hyperspectral and LiDAR sensors.
Tim is a CASA certified Remote Pilot and is experienced with a number of fixed wing and multi-rotor platforms. Tim is a member of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society and the Remote Sensing and Photography Society.
Areas of expertise and research interests
Geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA), tree crown extraction, vegetation cover mapping, RPAS data acquisition and analysis, linking field-based measurements to remotely sensed data, the use of remotely operated and telemetric in-situ sensors for environmental monitoring, and RPAS sensor integration.
Key publications
Whiteside TG & Bartolo RE 2018. A robust object-based woody cover extraction technique for monitoring mine site revegetation at scale in the monsoonal tropics using multispectral RPAS imagery from different sensors. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 73, 300-312. DOI: 10.1016/j.jag.2018.07.003
Pfitzner KS, Harford AJ, Whiteside TG & Bartolo RE 2018. Mapping magnesium sulfate salts from saline mine discharge with airborne hyperspectral data. Science of the Total Environment 640–641, 1259-1271. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.05.396
Whiteside TG & Bartolo RE 2015. Mapping aquatic vegetation in a tropical wetland using high spatial resolution multispectral satellite imagery. Remote Sensing 7 (9), 11664-11694.
Whiteside TG & Bartolo RE 2015. Use of WorldView-2 time series to establish a wetland monitoring program for potential offsite impacts of mine site rehabilitation. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 42, 24-37.
Whiteside TG, Boggs GS & Maier SW 2014. Area-based and location-based validation of classified image objects. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 28, 117-130.
Whiteside TG, Boggs GS & Maier SW 2011. Extraction of tree crowns from very high resolution imagery over Eucalypt dominant tropical savanna. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 77(8), 813–824. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14358/PERS.77.8.813
Whiteside TG, Boggs GS & Maier SW 2011. Comparing object-based and pixel-based classifications for mapping savannas. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13(6), 884–893.