Monitoring Ecosystem Dynamics In An Arctic Tundra Ecosystem Using Hyperspectral Reflectance And A Robotic Tram System

• Main Author: Goswami, Santonu
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: ScholarWorks@UTEP 2011
• Subjects: Arctic; Barrow; Alask; Hydrology; Hyperspectral Remote Sensing; NDVI; Phenology; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Environmental Sciences; Remote Sensing; Climate change; permafrost; Tundra; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd/2300; https://scholarworks.utep.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3299&context=open_etd

Global change, which includes climate change and the impacts of human disturbance, is altering the provision and sustainability of ecosystem goods and services. These changes have the capacity to initiate cascading affects and complex feedbacks through physical, biological and human subsystems and interactions between them. Understanding the future state of the earth system requires improved knowledge of ecosystem dynamics and long term observations of how these are being impacted by global change. Improving remote sensing methods is essential for such advancement because satellite remote sensing is the only means by which landscape to continental-scale change can be observed. The Arctic appears to be impacted by climate change more than any other region on Earth. Arctic terrestrial ecosystems comprise only 6% of the land surface area on Earth yet contain an estimated 25% of global soil organic carbon, most of which is stored in permafrost. If projected increases in plant productivity do not offset forecast losses of soil carbon to the atmosphere as greenhouse gases, regional to global greenhouse warming could be enhanced. Soil moisture is an important control of land-atmosphere carbon exchange in arctic terrestrial ecosystems. However, few studies to date have examined using remote sensing, or developed remote sensing methods for observing the complex interplay between soil moisture and plant phenology and productivity in arctic landscapes. This study was motivated by this knowledge gap and addressed the following questions as a contribution to a large scale, multi investigator flooding and draining experiment funded by the National Science Foundation near Barrow, Alaska (71°17'01" N, 156°35'48" W): * How can optical remote sensing be used to monitor the surface hydrology of arctic landscapes? * What are the spatio-temporal dynamics of land-surface phenology (NDVI) in the study area and do hydrological treatment has any effect on inter-annual patterns? * Is NDVI a good predictor for aboveground biomass and leaf ...