Officers from the department were working with the Australian Banana Growers Council and the University of Queensland to produce a detailed snapshot of banana plantations in the wake of the cyclone, which hit the area in March 2006.

"Queensland’s climate is projected to become more variable in the future, with a likely increase in the intensity of extreme events, such as cyclones," Minister Craig Wallace said in a statement. "Current and accurate information on the location of banana plantations will be very important in evaluating the risk of possible future damage from these events and for managing their potential impacts, such as pest and disease spread and communicating this with the growers."

The project, which was launched in November 2006, combines land use maps with high-resolution satellite imagery and aerial photography to provide a picture of what happened to the banana growing areas around Innisfail after the cyclone.

Land use mapping had been done on a state and regional level previously as part of the Queensland Land Use Mapping Program within the ministry, but this is the first effort in mapping specific tree crops such as bananas, Wallace said.

Bananas have a special "fingerprint," making them easy to see on a satellite image, and officers from the ministry’s department in Mareeba used the satellite images and photos to map the location and extent of banana plantations following the cyclone.

"The maps were then used by the University of Queensland to test new software for identifying the various colors, textures and patterns on satellite imagery. "The software has the potential to automatically detect and map banana plantations and could be used to produce the same sort of maps in the future," Wallace said. "So far, the results have been very promising."

The results have been provided to the Australian Banana Growers Council, which commissioned the project. The results will be available to other interested parties as digital data for Geographical Information Systems or a hard copy map.

"With the success of this project, future projects with other industries are now possible," Wallace said. "This is a great example of different organizations working together to assist an industry after the hardships inflicted by Cyclone Larry."