Quantifying ecosystem carbon fluxes and stocks is essential for better understanding the global carbon cycle and improving projections of the carbon-climate feedbacks. Remote sensing has played a ...vital role in this endeavor during the last five decades by quantifying carbon fluxes and stocks. The availability of satellite observations of the land surface since the 1970s, particularly the early 1980s, has made it feasible to quantify ecosystem carbon fluxes and stocks at regional to global scales. Here we provide a review of the advances in remote sensing of the terrestrial carbon cycle from the early 1970s to present. First, we present an overview of the terrestrial carbon cycle and remote sensing of carbon fluxes and stocks. Remote sensing data acquired in a broad wavelength range (visible, infrared, and microwave) of the electromagnetic spectrum have been used to estimate carbon fluxes and/or stocks. Second, we provide a historical overview of the key milestones in remote sensing of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Third, we review the platforms/sensors, methods, findings, and challenges in remote sensing of carbon fluxes. The remote sensing data and techniques used to quantify carbon fluxes include vegetation indices, light use efficiency models, terrestrial biosphere models, data-driven (or machine learning) approaches, solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), land surface temperature, and atmospheric inversions. Fourth, we review the platforms/sensors, methods, findings, and challenges in passive optical, microwave, and lidar remote sensing of biomass carbon stocks as well as remote sensing of soil organic carbon. Fifth, we review the progresses in remote sensing of disturbance impacts on the carbon cycle. Sixth, we also discuss the uncertainty and validation of the resulting carbon flux and stock estimates. Finally, we offer a forward-looking perspective and insights for future research and directions in remote sensing of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Remote sensing is anticipated to play an increasingly important role in carbon cycling studies in the future. This comprehensive and insightful review on 50 years of remote sensing of the terrestrial carbon cycle is timely and valuable and can benefit scientists in various research communities (e.g., carbon cycle, remote sensing, climate change, ecology) and inform ecosystem and carbon management, carbon-climate projections, and climate policymaking.
•We review 50 years of history and advances in remote sensing of C fluxes and stocks•We present an overview of terrestrial C cycle, remote sensing, and key milestones•We review remote sensing platforms/sensors, data, methods, findings, and challenges•We also discuss the uncertainty and validation of the C flux and stock estimates•A forward-looking perspective and insights for future research are provided
The enhanced vegetation index (EVI) was developed as a standard satellite vegetation product for the Terra and Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS). EVI provides improved ...sensitivity in high biomass regions while minimizing soil and atmosphere influences, however, is limited to sensor systems designed with a blue band, in addition to the red and near-infrared bands, making it difficult to generate long-term EVI time series as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) counterpart. The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate a 2-band EVI (EVI2), without a blue band, which has the best similarity with the 3-band EVI, particularly when atmospheric effects are insignificant and data quality is good. A linearity-adjustment factor
β is proposed and coupled with the soil-adjustment factor
L used in the soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) to develop EVI2. A global land cover dataset of Terra MODIS data extracted over land community validation and FLUXNET test sites is used to develop the optimal parameter (L, β and G) values in EVI2 equation and achieve the best similarity between EVI and EVI2. The similarity between the two indices is evaluated and demonstrated with temporal profiles of vegetation dynamics at local and global scales. Our results demonstrate that the differences between EVI and EVI2 are insignificant (within ±
0.02) over a very large sample of snow/ice-free land cover types, phenologies, and scales when atmospheric influences are insignificant, enabling EVI2 as an acceptable and accurate substitute of EVI. EVI2 can be used for sensors without a blue band, such as the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), and may reveal different vegetation dynamics in comparison with the current AVHRR NDVI dataset. However, cross-sensor continuity relationships for EVI2 remain to be studied.
In evergreen tropical forests, the extent, magnitude, and controls on photosynthetic seasonality are poorly resolved and inadequately represented in Earth system models. Combining camera observations ...with ecosystem carbon dioxide fluxes at forests across rainfall gradients in Amazônia, we show that aggregate canopy phenology, not seasonality of climate drivers, is the primary cause of photosynthetic seasonality in these forests. Specifically, synchronization of new leaf growth with dry season litterfall shifts canopy composition toward younger, more light-use efficient leaves, explaining large seasonal increases (~27%) in ecosystem photosynthesis. Coordinated leaf development and demography thus reconcile seemingly disparate observations at different scales and indicate that accounting for leaf-level phenology is critical for accurately simulating ecosystem-scale responses to climate change.
Examining climate-related satellite data that strongly relate to seasonal phenomena requires appropriate methods for detecting the seasonality to accommodate different temporal resolutions, high ...signal variability and consecutive missing values in the data series. Detection of satellite-based Land Surface Temperature (LST) seasonality is essential and challenging due to missing data and noise in time series data, particularly in tropical regions with heavy cloud cover and rainy seasons. We used a semi-parametric approach, involving the cubic spline function with the annual periodic boundary condition and weighted least square (WLS) regression, to extract annual LST seasonal pattern without attempting to estimate the missing values. The time series from daytime Aqua eight-day MODIS LST located on Phuket Island, southern Thailand, was selected for seasonal extraction modelling across three different land cover types. The spline-based technique with appropriate number and placement of knots produces an acceptable seasonal pattern of surface temperature time series that reflects the actual local season and weather. Finally, the approach was applied to the morning and afternoon MODIS LST datasets (MOD11A2 and MYD11A2) to demonstrate its application on seasonally-adjusted long-term LST time series. The surface temperature trend in both space and time was examined to reveal the overall 10-year period trend of LST in the study area. The result of decadal trend analysis shows that various Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) types have increasing, but variable surface temperature trends.
Photosynthesis is the process by which plants harvest sunlight to produce sugars from carbon dioxide and water. It is the primary source of energy for all life on Earth; hence it is important to ...understand how this process responds to climate change and human impact. However, model-based estimates of gross primary production (GPP, output from photosynthesis) are highly uncertain, in particular over heavily managed agricultural areas. Recent advances in spectroscopy enable the space-based monitoring of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) from terrestrial plants. Here we demonstrate that spaceborne SIF retrievals provide a direct measure of the GPP of cropland and grassland ecosystems. Such a strong link with crop photosynthesis is not evident for traditional remotely sensed vegetation indices, nor for more complex carbon cycle models. We use SIF observations to provide a global perspective on agricultural productivity. Our SIF-based crop GPP estimates are 50-75% higher than results from state-of-the-art carbon cycle models over, for example, the US Corn Belt and the Indo-Gangetic Plain, implying that current models severely underestimate the role of management. Our results indicate that SIF data can help us improve our global models for more accurate projections of agricultural productivity and climate impact on crop yields. Extension of our approach to other ecosystems, along with increased observational capabilities for SIF in the near future, holds the prospect of reducing uncertainties in the modeling of the current and future carbon cycle.
Gross ecosystem productivity (GEP) in tropical forests varies both with the environment and with biotic changes in photosynthetic infrastructure, but our understanding of the relative effects of ...these factors across timescales is limited. Here, we used a statistical model to partition the variability of seven years of eddy covariance‐derived GEP in a central Amazon evergreen forest into two main causes: variation in environmental drivers (solar radiation, diffuse light fraction, and vapor pressure deficit) that interact with model parameters that govern photosynthesis and biotic variation in canopy photosynthetic light‐use efficiency associated with changes in the parameters themselves. Our fitted model was able to explain most of the variability in GEP at hourly (R2 = 0.77) to interannual (R2 = 0.80) timescales. At hourly timescales, we found that 75% of observed GEP variability could be attributed to environmental variability. When aggregating GEP to the longer timescales (daily, monthly, and yearly), however, environmental variation explained progressively less GEP variability: At monthly timescales, it explained only 3%, much less than biotic variation in canopy photosynthetic light‐use efficiency, which accounted for 63%. These results challenge modeling approaches that assume GEP is primarily controlled by the environment at both short and long timescales. Our approach distinguishing biotic from environmental variability can help to resolve debates about environmental limitations to tropical forest photosynthesis. For example, we found that biotically regulated canopy photosynthetic light‐use efficiency (associated with leaf phenology) increased with sunlight during dry seasons (consistent with light but not water limitation of canopy development) but that realized GEP was nonetheless lower relative to its potential efficiency during dry than wet seasons (consistent with water limitation of photosynthesis in given assemblages of leaves). This work highlights the importance of accounting for differential regulation of GEP at different timescales and of identifying the underlying feedbacks and adaptive mechanisms.
The current standard procedure for aligning thermal imagery with structure-from-motion (SfM) software uses GPS logger data for the initial image location. As input data, all thermal images of the ...flight are rescaled to cover the same dynamic scale range, but they are not corrected for changes in meteorological conditions during the flight. This standard procedure can give poor results, particularly in datasets with very low contrast between and within images or when mapping very complex 3D structures. To overcome this, three alignment procedures were introduced and tested: camera pre-calibration, correction of thermal imagery for small changes in air temperature, and improved estimation of the initial image position by making use of the alignment of RGB (visual) images. These improvements were tested and evaluated in an agricultural (low temperature contrast data) and an afforestation (complex 3D structure) dataset. In both datasets, the standard alignment procedure failed to align the images properly, either by resulting in point clouds with several gaps (images that were not aligned) or with unrealistic 3D structure. Using initial thermal camera positions derived from RGB image alignment significantly improved thermal image alignment in all datasets. Air temperature correction had a small yet positive impact on image alignment in the low-contrast agricultural dataset, but a minor effect in the afforestation area. The effect of camera calibration on the alignment was limited in both datasets. Still, in both datasets, the combination of all three procedures significantly improved the alignment, in terms of number of aligned images and of alignment quality.
Amazon Forests Green-Up During 2005 Drought Saleska, Scott R; Didan, Kamel; Huete, Alfredo R ...
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
10/2007, Letnik:
318, Številka:
5850
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Coupled climate-carbon cycle models suggest that Amazon forests are vulnerable to both long- and short-term droughts, but satellite observations showed a large-scale photosynthetic green-up in intact ...evergreen forests of the Amazon in response to a short, intense drought in 2005. These findings suggest that Amazon forests, although threatened by human-caused deforestation and fire and possibly by more severe long-term droughts, may be more resilient to climate changes than ecosystem models assume.
Vegetation indices (VIs) are among the oldest tools in remote sensing studies. Although many variations exist, most of them ratio the reflection of light in the red and NIR sections of the spectrum ...to separate the landscape into water, soil, and vegetation. Theoretical analyses and field studies have shown that VIs are near-linearly related to photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by a plant canopy, and therefore to light-dependent physiological processes, such as photosynthesis, occurring in the upper canopy. Practical studies have used time-series VIs to measure primary production and evapotranspiration, but these are limited in accuracy to that of the data used in ground truthing or calibrating the models used. VIs are also used to estimate a wide variety of other canopy attributes that are used in Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere Transfer (SVAT), Surface Energy Balance (SEB), and Global Climate Models (GCM). These attributes include fractional vegetation cover, leaf area index, roughness lengths for turbulent transfer, emissivity and albedo. However, VIs often exhibit only moderate, non-linear relationships to these canopy attributes, compromising the accuracy of the models. We use case studies to illustrate the use and misuse of VIs, and argue for using VIs most simply as a measurement of canopy light absorption rather than as a surrogate for detailed features of canopy architecture. Used this way, VIs are compatible with "Big Leaf" SVAT and GCMs that assume that canopy carbon and moisture fluxes have the same relative response to the environment as any single leaf, simplifying the task of modeling complex landscapes.
Shrublands occupy about 13% of the global land surface, contain about one-third of the biodiversity, store about half of the global terrestrial carbon, and provide many ecosystem services to a large ...amount of world's human population and livestock. Because phenology is a sensitive indicator of the response of shrubland ecosystems to climate change, the alteration of ecosystems following species invasions, and the dynamics of shrubland ecosystem function, biodiversity, and carbon budgets, it is critical to monitor and assess phenological dynamics in shrubland ecosystems. However, most current land surface phenology (LSP) products derived from satellite data do not provide phenology detections in some semiarid shrublands where the amplitude of seasonal vegetation greenness is small. Therefore, we investigated the LSP detection using multiple spatial resolution satellite data and examined the impacts of spatial scales and shrubland ecosystem components (shrub and herb cover) on LSP detections over the western United States. Specifically, greenup onset date (GUD) in shrublands was detected from 30 m Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) data and 500 m Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) data to quantify scale effects. The GUD spatial patterns were explored with 30 m pixel variations in shrubland ecosystem components. The results show that GUD values varied with percent vegetation cover and shifted to earlier dates with increasing vegetation cover, demonstrating that satellite observations were not able to capture greenup onset until a threshold of green vegetation cover is reached. GUD was mostly undetectable from both HLS and VIIRS pixels with vegetation cover less than 10% and became fully detectable with vegetation covers larger than 50%. Similarly, the differences of GUD between HLS and VIIRS detections also decreased with increased vegetation cover. As a result of high shrubland heterogeneity, GUD from 30 m HLS pixels could be partially detected within a 500 m pixel despite GUD being undetectable from VIIRS time series. Moreover, vegetation cover heterogeneity also made it difficult for GUD at 30 m to be aggregated to coarse scales (such as to 500 m VIIRS pixels). These findings have significant implications to the detection and characterization of shrubland LSP responses to environmental and climate changes.
•Phenology detectability exponentially increases with percent vegetation cover.•Greenup onset is detectable earlier in higher vegetation cover pixels.•Phenology difference is considerably large between fine and coarse pixels.•Phenology difference between pixel sizes decreases with vegetation cover.
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