The use of repeat colour digital photography to monitor high Arctic tundra vegetation ...

• Main Author: Beamish, Alison Leslie
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2013
• Subjects: Arctic; Climate change; Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0165640; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0165640

High Arctic ecosystems are experiencing some of the earliest and most extreme changes in climate as a result of global climate change. Temperature increases twice the hemispheric average are initiating changes to terrestrial systems including shifts in timing of phenology, aboveground biomass and community composition of Arctic vegetation. Satellite imagery from the last 30 years has shown a greening across tundra ecosystems with increases in peak productivity and growing season length. A few plot scale field studies support these large-scale trends but overall validation at the plot scale is still lacking. Current manual and automated methods for monitoring vegetation at the community and plot scale is both time consuming and employs expensive, sensitive multispectral instrumentation that can be cumbersome to use in Arctic field sites. In this thesis I examine the utility of colour digital photography in monitoring tundra vegetation across four different vegetation communities, inside and outside of passive ...