It’s a great tool, to be able to identify trees and shrubs from aerial images, but it needs a lot more to depict whether deaths are from reduced water tables, insect damage or rust fungus and jarrah dieback outbreaks. One would hope that science and common sense prevails, and not scaremongering, like the CSIRO are proving good at.
Tree death patterns revealed through statistical lens
NEW methods of analysing high resolution digital airborne imagery are being trialled in a bid to track water usage in Perth’s drying climate. [...]
The rainfall pattern for the South West does not show a drying climate for starters. The Perth Coastal Plain however is dropping, along with increased pumping from coastal aquifers:
2011 update 37 year Perth dams catchment rainfall trend – nearly a Thousand GL of water wasted over 15 years by not managing catchments
January 1st, 2012 by Warwick Hughes
In 2011 the Perth region has enjoyed an above average rain year – as shown in my graphic of 37 years of Perth dams catchment region May-October rainfall. 
This second graphic shows the constant decline in “catchment efficiency” CE since the late 1990′s – which was about the last time water authorities did much to control understorey regrowth in catchments which drastically cuts back inflows to streams. A calculation for each of the last 15 years – assuming that a CE of 5.6% could easily be achieved without harming wildlife values – shows that a total of 998GL has been lost from 1997-2011. I have not costed this – but the extra 66GL PA would have made it unnecessary to embrace seawater desalination in such a rush.
2010 update 36 year Perth dams catchment rainfall trend
Stunning ignorance and lies surround Perth water supply policies
2009 update – Perth dam catchments rainfall still normal, Govt building $Billion seawater desalination plant #2
There never was a rain shortage to justify seawater desalination for Perth’s water supply
