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Landsat Time Series-based Vegetation Change: Context for Understanding Ecological Legacies

This presentation discusses how Landsat satellite images can help understand ecological legacies and the effects of anthropogenic activities on ecosystem structure, species interactions, and biogeochemical dynamics. It also explores the ripple effects of land use and land cover changes at broad scales.

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Landsat Time Series-based Vegetation Change: Context for Understanding Ecological Legacies

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  1. Landsat Time Series-based Vegetation Change: Context for Understanding Ecological Legacies Lee A. Vierling1, Sebastian Martinuzzi1, Andrew Hudak2, Steve Garrity1,3, Jan Eitel1, Eva Strand1, Mike Falkowski1,4, Kerri Vierling5 1 Department of Forest Ecology and Biogeosciences, University of Idaho, 2 USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, 3 Ohio State University, 4 Michigan Technological University, 5Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Resources, U. of Idaho Landsat Science Team Meeting, June 15-17, 2010

  2. Landsat: Setting the Ecological Context • Recent advances in improved radiometric normalization, atmospheric correction, and cloud/shadow masking allow for more efficient processing of large multitemporal (and now, freely downloadable!) image stacks. • The resultant (and continually evolving) record of vegetation cover and change dynamics is a tremendous resource for ecological investigation because they help explain spatial patterns of ecological legacies. • Studies of ecosystem structure and function will increasingly rely upon understanding these patterns of ecological legacies as established by Landsat.

  3. Landsat: Setting the Ecological Context Kennedy et al., 2007

  4. Ecological Legacies: Forks in the Road • Anthropogenic activities can create complex feedback loops in ecological systems that persist long after human abandonment • These feedbacks lead to new ecological steady states with respect to • Ecosystem Structure • Species Interactions • Biogeochemical Dynamics

  5. Ecological Legacies: Landsat as Bellwether • Will feedbacks lead to new ecological steady states with respect to: • Ecosystem Structure • Species Interactions • Biogeochemical Dynamics • …at landscape to regional scales? McKey et al., 2010 Kennedy et al., 2007

  6. Natural History at the Landscape Scale • Our goal is to understand the ripple effects of these Landsat-detected LULC changes on: • Successional trajectories • Interactions among organisms at multiple trophic levels • Ecosystem services • Vegetation phenology: inter- and intra-annually • Many of these changes are subtle. So, we are developing additional remote sensing approaches to complement the capabilities of Landsat • On to a brief tour….

  7. The Legacy of Ecosystem Structure

  8. The Legacy of Ecosystem Structure Falkowski et al., Rem. Sens. Env., 2009

  9. The Legacy of Ecosystem Structure Falkowski et al., Rem. Sens. Env., 2009

  10. Ecosystem Structure  Species Interactions PREDICTED HABITAT AFTER PREDICTED HABITAT BEFORE NLCD CANOPY COVER (“FILTER”) Clark’s Nutcracker habitat Blue Grouse habitat Martinuzzi et al., J. Appl. Rem. Sens., 2009a

  11. Ecosystem Structure  Species Interactions Before (n=238) After (n=238) Change Number of species 1 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 90 100 110 121 % -60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 Martinuzzi et al., J. Appl. Rem. Sens., 2009a

  12. Ecosystem Structure  Species Interactions Moscow Mountain successional map, refined to locate snags and understory shrubs using lidar and Landsat-informed field sampling Mapping accuracy = 79% to 91% Martinuzzi et al., Rem. Sens. Env., 2009b

  13. Ecosystem Structure  Species Interactions Primary Producers Snags >= 30cm Understory shrubs Snags >= 15cm Snags >= 25cm ee ee ee Dusky flycatcher Downy woodpecker Lewis’s woodpecker Hairy woodpecker SecondaryConsumers

  14. Ecosystem Structure  Species Interactions Vierling et al., Ecological Applications, 2010

  15. Insights to Biogeochemical Legacies? Leaf spectra McKey et al., 2010

  16. Insights to Biogeochemical Legacies? Eitel, Vierling, and Long, Rem. Sens. Env., 2010

  17. Insights to Biogeochemical Legacies? Goal: deriving pools of foliar pigments using RS Garrity, Eitel, and Vierling, in review

  18. Insights to Biogeochemical Legacies? Goal: deriving pools of foliar pigments using RS Garrity, Eitel, and Vierling, in review

  19. Understanding Ecological Legacies at Broad Scales • Disturbance context from the Landsat archive • Landscape-scale information about: • Ecosystem 3D Structure • Species Interactions • Biogeochemical Dynamics • Improved insight into the long-term effects of human land use and land cover change Kennedy et al., 2007

  20. Thank you. leev@uidaho.edu

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