Radiation 2006. In association with the Polymer Division, Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Incorporating the 21st AINSE Radiation Chemistry Conference and the 18th Radiation Biology Conference, conference handbook

Full text: In Australia there have been reported more than 200 species of Biological Soil Crusts (BSC) including: cyanobacteria, mosses and lichens. Working at the species level of BSC poses particular difficulties for different aspects of environmental management because of the problems caused by in taxonomy, small size, lack of experts for identification and the intermixing of taxa. From the 1970s BSC classification based on the morphology has been utilised for ecological studies. This study explores the possibility of spectral classification of BSC components for ecological studies and considers the use of hyperspectral remote sensing techniques. Although, in some locations the percentage cover of BSC exceeds 70% of land cover, many previous remote sensing studies of land cover have either neglected BSC, or considered it as one group. In this study visible and near-infrared (350-1100 nm) reflectance spectra of BSC were collected with a UniSpec PPSystem spectrometer in the laboratory under a 1000 W Halogen lamp. Biological components varied in chlorophyll, physiological status, colour and other pigment contents. The measured spectra demonstrate considerable variation both within and between species. Factors contributing to spectral variation were identified by principal components analysis. Functional, taxonomic and morphological groups of BSC species were classified using discriminant analysis of the narrow-bands (3.3 nm) spectra. Both principal components and discriminant analysis showed promising results for grouping BSC variation and finally 9 groups from 21 field groups (33 species) were classified