scholarly journals Mapping the Spatial Distribution of Tea Plantations Using High-Spatiotemporal-Resolution Imagery in Northern Zhejiang, China

Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 856 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li ◽  
Zhang ◽  
Li ◽  
Zhang

Tea plantations are widely distributed in the southern provinces of China and have expanded rapidly in recent years due to their high economic value. This expansion has caused ecological problems such as soil erosion, and it is therefore urgent to clarify the spatial distribution and area of tea plantations. In this study, we developed a simple method to accurately map tea plantations based on their unique phenological characteristics observed from VENμS high-spatiotemporal-resolution multispectral imagery. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and red—green ratio index (RGRI) of time series were calculated using 40 VENμS images taken in 2018 to evaluate the phenology of tea plantations. The unique phenological period of tea plantations in northern Zhejiang is from April to May, with obvious deep pruning, which is very different from the phenological period of other vegetation. During this period, the RGRI values of tea plantations were much higher than those of other vegetation such as broadleaf forest and bamboo forest. Therefore, it is possible to identify tea plantations from the vegetation in images acquired during their phenological period. This method was applied to tea plantation mapping in northern Zhejiang. The NDVI value of the winter image was used to extract a vegetation coverage map, and spatial intersection analysis combined with maps of tea plantation phenological information was performed to obtain a tea plantation distribution map. The resulting tea plantation map had a high accuracy, with a 94% producer accuracy and 95.9% user accuracy. The method was also applied to Sentinel-2 images at the regional scale, and the obtained tea plantation distribution map had an accuracy of 88.7%, indicating the good applicability of the method.

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1754
Author(s):  
Zhaoquan He ◽  
Xue Shang ◽  
Tonghui Zhang

Forest landscape restoration and ecosystem of Loess Plateau have enhanced prominently, since the policy implementation (1999) of the Grain for Green Project in China. Land ecological security (LES) performs an extremely critical function for protecting vulnerable land resources and sustaining forest ecosystem stability. Predecessors’ studies substantially concentrate on biophysical and meteorologic variables using numerous grounded methodologies, little research has been launched on systematic natural-socio-economic-ecological relationships and how these contributions and regulations for LES evaluation. Here, pressure-state-response (PSR) model was used to establish the evaluation system of LES in regional-scale, and LES was classified into five levels measured by ecological security index (S), including high (S ≥ 0.75), medium−high (0.65 ≤ S < 0.75), medium (0.55 ≤ S < 0.65), medium−low (0.45 ≤ S < 0.55), and low (S < 0.45) level, for systematically analyzing its spatiotemporal distribution characteristic and response mechanism to explanatory variables in Yan’an, northwest China, from 2000 to 2018. The results demonstrated that: (1) LES status was mainly characterized by medium−high level and medium level, and maintained profound stability. (2) zone with medium−high LES level was mainly concentrated in western and southern regions, continuously expanding to northeast regions, and possessed the largest territorial area, accounting for 37.22%–46.27% of the total area in Yan’an. (3) LES was primarily susceptible to normalized differential vegetation index, vegetation coverage, and land surface temperature with their optimal impacting thresholds of 0.20–0.64, 0.20–0.55, and 11.20–13.00 °C, respectively. (4) Normalized differential vegetation index and vegetation coverage had a significant synergistic effect upon LES based on their interactive explanation rate of 31% and had significant variation consistency (positive and negative) with LES, which were powerfully suggested to signal the intensification of the regional eco-security level in the persistent eco-greening process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 87 (9) ◽  
pp. 649-660
Author(s):  
Majid Rahimzadegan ◽  
Arash Davari ◽  
Ali Sayadi

Soil moisture content (SMC), product of Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), is not at an adequate level of accuracy on a regional scale. The aim of this study is to introduce a simple method to estimate SMC while synergistically using AMSR2 and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) measurements with a higher accuracy on a regional scale. Two MODIS products, including daily reflectance (MYD021) and nighttime land surface temperature (LST) products were used. In 2015, 1442 in situ SMC measurements from six stations in Iran were used as ground-truth data. Twenty models were evaluated using combinations of polarization index (PI), index of soil wetness (ISW), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and LST. The model revealed the best results using a quadratic combination of PI and ISW, a linear form of LST, and a constant value. The overall correlation coefficient, root-mean-square error, and mean absolute error were 0.59, 4.62%, and 3.01%, respectively.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (23) ◽  
pp. 3860
Author(s):  
Abdelrazek Elnashar ◽  
Hongwei Zeng ◽  
Bingfang Wu ◽  
Ning Zhang ◽  
Fuyou Tian ◽  
...  

Accurate precipitation data at high spatiotemporal resolution are critical for land and water management at the basin scale. We proposed a downscaling framework for Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation products through integrating Google Earth Engine (GEE) and Google Colaboratory (Colab). Three machine learning methods, including Gradient Boosting Regressor (GBR), Support Vector Regressor (SVR), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) were compared in the framework. Three vegetation indices (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI; Enhanced Vegetation Index, EVI; Leaf Area Index, LAI), topography, and geolocation are selected as geospatial predictors to perform the downscaling. This framework can automatically optimize the models’ parameters, estimate features’ importance, and downscale the TRMM product to 1 km. The spatial downscaling of TRMM from 25 km to 1 km was achieved by using the relationships between annual precipitations and annually-averaged vegetation index. The monthly precipitation maps derived from the annual downscaled precipitation by disaggregation. According to validation in the Great Mekong upstream region, the ANN yielded the best performance when simulating the annual TRMM precipitation. The most sensitive vegetation index for downscaling TRMM was LAI, followed by EVI. Compared with existing downscaling methods, the proposed framework for downscaling TRMM can be performed online for any given region using a wide range of machine learning tools and environmental variables to generate a precipitation product with high spatiotemporal resolution.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Chongya Jiang ◽  
Kaiyu Guan ◽  
Genghong Wu ◽  
Bin Peng ◽  
Sheng Wang

Abstract. Gross primary productivity (GPP) quantifies the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) fixed by plants through photosynthesis. Although as a key quantity of terrestrial ecosystems, there is a lack of high-spatial-and-temporal-resolution, real-time and observation-based GPP products. To address this critical gap, here we leverage a state-of-the-art vegetation index, near-infrared reflectance of vegetation (NIRV), along with accurate photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), to produce a SatelLite Only Photosynthesis Estimation (SLOPE) GPP product for the contiguous United States (CONUS). Compared to existing GPP products, the proposed SLOPE product is advanced in its spatial resolution (250 m versus >500 m), temporal resolution (daily versus 8 d), instantaneity (latency of 1 d versus >2 weeks) and quantitative uncertainty (on a per-pixel and daily basis versus no uncertainty information available). These characteristics are achieved because of several technical innovations employed in this study: (1) SLOPE couples machine learning models with MODIS atmosphere and land products to accurately estimate PAR. (2) SLOPE couples highly efficient and pragmatic gap-filling and filtering algorithms with surface reflectance acquired by both Terra and Aqua MODIS satellites to derive a soil-adjusted NIRV (SANIRV) dataset. (3) SLOPE couples a temporal pattern recognition approach with a long-term Cropland Data Layer (CDL) product to predict dynamic C4 crop fraction. Through developing a parsimonious model with only two slope parameters, the proposed SLOPE product explains 85 % of the spatial and temporal variations in GPP acquired from 49 AmeriFlux eddy-covariance sites (324 site years), with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 1.63 gC m−2 d−1. The median R2 over C3 and C4 crop sites reaches 0.87 and 0.94, respectively, indicating great potentials for monitoring crops, in particular bioenergy crops, at the field level. With such a satisfactory performance and its distinct characteristics in spatiotemporal resolution and instantaneity, the proposed SLOPE GPP product is promising for biological and environmental research, carbon cycle research, and a broad range of real-time applications at the regional scale. The archived dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1786 (download page: https://daac.ornl.gov/daacdata/cms/SLOPE_GPP_CONUS/data/, last access: 20 January 2021) (Jiang and Guan, 2020), and the real-time dataset is available upon request.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 2192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ni ◽  
Yang ◽  
Li ◽  
Zhao ◽  
He

The occurrence of aftershocks and geohazards (landslides, collapses, and debris flows) decreases with time following a major earthquake. The 12 May 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan, China, provides the opportunity to characterize the subsequent spatiotemporal evolution of geohazards. Following the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, the incidence of geohazards first increased sharply, representing a “post-earthquake effect”, before starting to decrease. We compared the spatial distribution of the area affected by vegetation damage (AVD) triggered by large and medium-scale geohazards (LMG). We studied the interval prior to the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake (2001–2007), the co-seismic period (2008), and the post-earthquake interval (2009–2016) and characterized the trend of decreasing geohazards at a macro scale. In vegetated areas, geohazards often seriously damage the vegetation, resulting in pronounced contrasts with the surrounding surface in terms of color tone, texture, morphology, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) which are evident in remote sensing images (RSI). In principle, it is possible to use the strong positive correlation between AVD and geohazards to determine indirectly the resulting vegetation and to monitor its spatiotemporal evolution. In this study we attempted to characterize the process of geohazard evolution in the region affected by the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake during 2001–2016. Our approach was to analyze the characteristics of areas with reduced vegetation coverage caused by LMG. Our principal findings are as follows: (i) Before the Wenchuan Earthquake (during 2001–2007), there was no evidence for a linear increase in the number of LMG with time; thus, the geological environment was relatively stable and the geohazards were mainly induced by rainfall events. (ii) The 12 May 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake was the main cause of a surge in geohazards in 2008, with the characteristics of seismogenic faults and strong aftershocks determining the spatial distribution of geohazards. (iii) Following the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake (during 2009–2016) the incidence of geohazards exhibited an oscillating pattern of attenuation, with a decreasing trend of higher-grade seismic intensity. The intensity of geohazards was related to rainfall and seismogenic faults, and also to the number, magnitude and depth of new earthquakes following the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. Our results provide a new perspective on the temporal pattern of attenuation of seismic geohazards, with implications for disaster prevention and mitigation and ecological restoration in the areas affected by the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-14
Author(s):  
Wahyu Adi

Pulau Kecil Gelasa merupakan daerah yang belum banyak diteliti. Pemetaan ekosistem di pulau kecil dilakukan dengan bantuan citra Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS). Penelitian terdahulu diketahui bahwa ALOS memiliki kemampuan memetakan terumbu karang dan padang lamun di perairan dangkal serta mampu memetakan kerapatan penutupan vegetasi. Metode interpretasi citra menggunakan alogaritma indeks vegetasi pada citra ALOS yaitu NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), serta pendekatan Lyzengga untuk mengkoreksi kolom perairan. Hasil penelitian didapatkan luasan Padang Lamun di perairan dangkal 41,99 Ha, luasan Terumbu Karang 125,57 Ha. Hasil NDVI di daratan/ pulau kecil Gelasa untuk Vegetasi Rapat seluas 47,62 Ha; luasan penutupan Vegetasi Sedang 105,86 Ha; dan penutupan Vegetasi Jarang adalah 34,24 Ha.   Small Island Gelasa rarely studied. Mapping ecosystems on small islands with the image of Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS). Previous research has found that ALOS has the ability to map coral reefs and seagrass beds in shallow water, and is able to map vegetation cover density. The method of image interpretation uses the vegetation index algorithm in the ALOS image, NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), and the Lyzengga approach to correct the water column. The results of the study were obtained in the area of Seagrass Padang in the shallow waters of 41.99 ha, the area of coral reefs was 125.57 ha. NDVI results on land / small islands Gelasa for dense vegetation of 47.62 ha; area of Medium Vegetation coverage 105.86 Ha; and the coverage of Rare Vegetation is 34.24 Ha.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 587
Author(s):  
Danielle Hamae Yamauchi ◽  
Hans Garcia Garces ◽  
Marcus de Melo Teixeira ◽  
Gabriel Fellipe Barros Rodrigues ◽  
Leila Sabrina Ullmann ◽  
...  

Soil is the principal habitat and reservoir of fungi that act on ecological processes vital for life on Earth. Understanding soil fungal community structures and the patterns of species distribution is crucial, considering climatic change and the increasing anthropic impacts affecting nature. We evaluated the soil fungal diversity in southeastern Brazil, in a transitional region that harbors patches of distinct biomes and ecoregions. The samples originated from eight habitats, namely: semi-deciduous forest, Brazilian savanna, pasture, coffee and sugarcane plantation, abandoned buildings, owls’ and armadillos’ burrows. Forty-four soil samples collected in two periods were evaluated by metagenomic approaches, focusing on the high-throughput DNA sequencing of the ITS2 rDNA region in the Illumina platform. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was used for vegetation cover analysis. NDVI values showed a linear relationship with both diversity and richness, reinforcing the importance of a healthy vegetation for the establishment of a diverse and complex fungal community. The owls’ burrows presented a peculiar fungal composition, including high rates of Onygenales, commonly associated with keratinous animal wastes, and Trichosporonales, a group of basidiomycetous yeasts. Levels of organic matter and copper influenced all guild communities analyzed, supporting them as important drivers in shaping the fungal communities’ structures.


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