192 
Ganl. Bull. Singapore 70 (Suppl. 1) 2018 
destruction of the Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest and its surrounding areas would 
pose a great threat to these unique groups of species. Therefore, it is important to 
maintain Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest in approximately its current state, as well 
as ensuring that it is not affected adversely by development and other environmental 
pressures. 
The Nee Soon hydrology and biodiversity project was a response to the need 
for better understanding of the forest ecosystem and its dynamic processes, as a basis 
for management and monitoring (Davison et al., 2018). A detailed but still in many 
respects preliminary review of the results has been given in the accompanying papers 
in this same volume (Cai et al., 2018; Chong et al., 2018; Clews et al., 2018; Ho et al., 
2018; Kutty et al., 2018; Lim et al., 2018; Nguyen et al., 2018; Sun et al., 2018). 
Project Aims 
The project aimed to undertake field and modelling investigations that were required in 
order to create maps and collate information for the development of eco-hydrological 
models of Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest. The project was carried out in two 
phases, from January 2011 to March 2012, and from February 2013 to August 2016. 
The detailed aims of each phase are listed by Davison et al. (2018). 
Table 1 summarises the achievements of the project and these fully covered the 
listed aims. 
Results 
Mapping and geodatabase 
Phase 1 of the “Nee Soon Swamp Forest hydrology and biodiversity project” generated 
important baseline datasets on the hydrology, geology, topography and flora of the 
area and clearly set out the research path for Phase 2. Key focus areas of relevance 
to mapping and imagery included: (i) the development of more refined hydrological 
models for systems understanding and for utilisation in scenario modelling; and (ii) 
establishment of current ecological status/condition across a number of biotic and 
abiotic components. The geospatial team had a major underpinning role in Phase 2 
of the project, achieved through two broad tasks, the collection and analysis of spatial 
information, and the collation of all such information into a geodatabase. 
The environment of Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest represented a challenge 
to conventional topography due to limitations in access. Moreover, line-of-sight was 
greatly reduced in areas of higher tree density, constraining the efficacy of direct 
topographic surveys. Through application of remote sensing techniques, direct 
topography effort was optimised, focusing on acquiring high-resolution stream data 
and ground control points for validation of remote-sensing models. Photogramme try 
of remote sensing imagery involves the use of digital image data in conjunction with 
automatic image matching techniques to produce Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) 
