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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (29 November 2019) | Viewed by 57712

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Eben N. Broadbent

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Guest Editor

Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab, School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32603, USA
Interests: remote sensing; forest ecology; conservation biology; airborne sensors; GatorEye; landscape simulation models; ecosystem and canopy ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Stephanie Pau

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Guest Editor

Department of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Interests: tropical forest; climate change; biodiversity; phenology; species distributions

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Tropical ecosystems are globally significant reservoirs of carbon, support a large percentage of the known fauna and flora species on Earth, and provide an array of local and global ecosystems services supporting human well-being. Phenology—the timing of biological events such as reproductive or leafing patterns—is both a driver and response to climate change and provides key insight into the ecological functioning of one of the largest biomes on Earth.

Remote sensing approaches, which provide the only continuous repeat observations across landscapes to assess tropical ecosystems, are often confounded by atmospheric conditions having high water content or cloudiness, while a high leaf area causes many sensors, particularly optical, to saturate, preventing accurate measurements of phenological change and resulting ecosystem functions. Additionally, very high species richness, dense canopies, and structural complexity can complicate our ability to understand the spatial-temporal dynamics of tropical systems. New approaches have the potential to overcome these challenges. In particular, newly launched satellites will bring on-board spaceborne LiDAR (GEDI) and SAR (NISAR), potentially allowing effective mapping through cloud cover. New constellations of micro-satellites (Planet) are now allowing observations across landscapes at very high spatial resolutions (e.g., 3x3m) at up to daily repeat cycles. Drone-borne and in-situ sensors can measure daily repeat, high-resolution visual, hyperspectral, and LiDAR, bridging ground-based and satellite observations.

In this Special Issue, we are inviting submissions that advance our understanding of tropical phenology across diverse habitats using data-fusion from diverse sources such as LiDAR, SAR, hyperspectral, and optical remote sensing with in-situ observations from drones, eddy-covariance, near-surface cameras, and ground-based phenological observations such as citizen science or long-term ecological monitoring. Potential topics include those listed below, although we are not limited to these topics if the submission is in line with the general theme as described above:

Understanding how plant spectral diversity and functional traits scale from species to landscapes.
Understanding the timing of key phenological events across environmental gradients and how they affect ecosystem processes such as productivity.
Quantifying rates of change, sensitivities, and vulnerabilities of species, populations, and communities to climate change.
New statistical, process-based, object-oriented, and/or machine-learning approaches for spatial-temporal data-fusion.

Dr. Eben N. Broadbent
Dr. Stephanie Pau
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Biodiversity mapping
Ecosystem functions
Spectral diversity
Climate change
Multi-sensor data fusion
Time-series analysis
Tropical forest
Savanna

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Published Papers (9 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 4395 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Monitoring Mega-Crown Leaf Turnover from Space

by Emma R. Bush, Edward T. A. Mitchard, Thiago S. F. Silva, Edmond Dimoto, Pacôme Dimbonda, Loïc Makaga and Katharine Abernethy

Remote Sens. 2020, 12(3), 429; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12030429 - 29 Jan 2020

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4545

Abstract

Spatial and temporal patterns of tropical leaf renewal are poorly understood and poorly parameterized in modern Earth System Models due to lack of data. Remote sensing has great potential for sampling leaf phenology across tropical landscapes but until now has been impeded by lack of ground-truthing, cloudiness, poor spatial resolution, and the cryptic nature of incremental leaf turnover in many tropical plants. To our knowledge, satellite data have never been used to monitor individual crown leaf phenology in the tropics, an innovation that would be a major breakthrough for individual and species-level ecology and improve climate change predictions for the tropics. In this paper, we assessed whether satellite data can detect leaf turnover for individual trees using ground observations of a candidate tropical tree species, Moabi (Baillonella toxisperma), which has a mega-crown visible from space. We identified and delineated Moabi crowns at Lopé NP, Gabon from satellite imagery using ground coordinates and extracted high spatial and temporal resolution, optical, and synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) timeseries data for each tree. We normalized these data relative to the surrounding forest canopy and combined them with concurrent monthly crown observations of new, mature, and senescent leaves recorded from the ground. We analyzed the relationship between satellite and ground observations using generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs). Ground observations of leaf turnover were significantly correlated with optical indices derived from Sentinel-2 optical data (the normalized difference vegetation index and the green leaf index), but not with SAR data derived from Sentinel-1. We demonstrate, perhaps for the first time, how the leaf phenology of individual large-canopied tropical trees can directly influence the spectral signature of satellite pixels through time. Additionally, while the level of uncertainty in our model predictions is still very high, we believe this study shows that we are near the threshold for orbital monitoring of individual crowns within tropical forests, even in challenging locations, such as cloudy Gabon. Further technical advances in remote sensing instruments into the spatial and temporal scales relevant to organismal biological processes will unlock great potential to improve our understanding of the Earth system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Phenology)

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25 pages, 5684 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Analysis of Grassland Degradation in Zona da Mata, MG, Brazil, Based on NDVI Time Series Data with the Integration of Phenological Metrics

by Marcos C. Hott, Luis M. T. Carvalho, Mauro A. H. Antunes, João C. Resende and Wadson S. D. Rocha

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(24), 2956; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11242956 - 10 Dec 2019

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 4339

Abstract

There is currently a lot of interest in determining the state of Brazilian grasslands. Governmental actions and programs have recently been implemented for grassland recovery in Brazilian states, with the aim of improving production systems and socioeconomic indicators. The aim of this study is to evaluate the vegetative growth, temporal vigor, and long-term scenarios for the grasslands in Zona da Mata, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, by integrating phenological metrics. We used metrics derived from the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series from moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data, which were analyzed in a geographic information system (GIS), using multicriteria analysis, the analytical hierarchy process, and a simplified expert system (ES_S). These temporal metrics, i.e., the growth index (GI) for 16-day periods during the growing season; the slope; and the maximum, minimum, and mean for the time series, were integrated to investigate the grassland vegetation conditions and degradation level. The temporal vegetative vigor was successfully described using the rescaled range (R/S statistic) and the Hurst exponent, which, together with the metrics estimated for the full time series, imagery, and field observations, indicated areas undergoing degradation or areas that were inadequately managed (approximately 61.5%). Time series analysis revealed that most grasslands showed low or moderate vegetative vigor over time with long-term persistence due to farming practices associated with burning and overgrazing. A small part of the grasslands showed high and sustainable plant densities (approximately 8.5%). A map legend for grassland management guidelines was developed using the proposed method with remote sensing data, which were applied using GIS software and a field campaign. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Phenology)

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18 pages, 3219 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multi-Scale Association between Vegetation Growth and Climate in India: A Wavelet Analysis Approach

by Dawn Emil Sebastian, Sangram Ganguly, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Kate Duffy, Ramakrishna Nemani and Subimal Ghosh

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(22), 2703; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11222703 - 18 Nov 2019

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 5989

Abstract

Monsoon climate over India has high degree of spatio-temporal heterogeneity characterized by the existence of multi-climatic zones along with strong intra-seasonal, seasonal, and inter-annual variability. Vegetation growth of Indian forests relates to this climate variability, though the dependence structure over space and time is yet to be explored. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of this association with quality-controlled satellite-based remote sensing dataset of vegetation greenness and radiation along with station based gridded precipitation datasets. A spatio-temporal time-frequency analysis using wavelets is performed to understand the relative association of vegetation growth with precipitation and radiation at different time scales. The inter-annual variation of forest greenness over the Tropical India are observed to be correlated with the seasonal monsoon precipitation. However, at inter and intra-seasonal scales, vegetation has a strong association with radiation in regions of high precipitation like the Western Ghats, Eastern Himalayas, and Northeast hills. Forests in Western Himalayas were found to be correlated more on the winter precipitation from western disturbances than the south west monsoon precipitation. Our results provide new and useful region-specific information for dynamic vegetation modelling in the Indian monsoon region that may further be used in understanding global vegetation-land-atmosphere interactions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Phenology)

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24 pages, 11289 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessment of Phytoecological Variability by Red-Edge Spectral Indices and Soil-Landscape Relationships

by Helena S. K. Pinheiro, Theresa P. R. Barbosa, Mauro A. H. Antunes, Daniel Costa de Carvalho, Alexis R. Nummer, Waldir de Carvalho Junior, Cesar da Silva Chagas, Elpídio I. Fernandes-Filho and Marcos Gervasio Pereira

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(20), 2448; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11202448 - 22 Oct 2019

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3430

Abstract

There is a relation of vegetation physiognomies with soil and geological conditions that can be represented spatially with the support of remote sensing data. The goal of this research was to map vegetation physiognomies in a mountainous area by using Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument (MSI) data and morphometrical covariates through data mining techniques. The research was based on red-edge (RE) bands, and indices, to classify phytophysiognomies at two taxonomic levels. The input data was pixel sampled based on field sample sites. Data mining procedures comprised covariate selection and supervised classification through the Random Forest model. Results showed the potential of bands 3, 5, and 6 to map phytophysiognomies for both seasons, as well as Green Chlorophyll (CLg) and SAVI indices. NDVI indices were important, particularly those calculated with bands 6, 7, 8, and 8A, which were placed at the RE position. The model performance showed reasonable success to Kappa index 0.72 and 0.56 for the first and fifth taxonomic level, respectively. The model presented confusion between Broadleaved dwarf-forest, Parkland Savanna, and Bushy grassland. Savanna formations occurred variably in the area while Bushy grasslands strictly occur in certain landscape positions. Broadleaved forests presented the best performance (first taxonomic level), and among its variation (fifth level) the model could precisely capture the pattern for those on deep soils from gneiss parent material. The approach was thus useful to capture intrinsic soil-plant relationships and its relation with remote sensing data, showing potential to map phytophysiognomies in two distinct taxonomic levels in poorly accessible areas. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Phenology)

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21 pages, 2788 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Leafing Patterns and Drivers across Seasonally Dry Tropical Communities

by Bruna Alberton, Ricardo da Silva Torres, Thiago Sanna Freire Silva, Humberto R. da Rocha, Magna S. B. Moura and Leonor Patricia Cerdeira Morellato

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(19), 2267; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11192267 - 28 Sep 2019

Cited by 31 | Viewed by 5583

Abstract

Investigating the timing of key phenological events across environments with variable seasonality is crucial to understand the drivers of ecosystem dynamics. Leaf production in the tropics is mainly constrained by water and light availability. Identifying the factors regulating leaf phenology patterns allows efficiently forecasting of climate change impacts. We conducted a novel phenological monitoring study across four Neotropical vegetation sites using leaf phenology time series obtained from digital repeated photographs (phenocameras). Seasonality differed among sites, from very seasonally dry climate in the caatinga dry scrubland with an eight-month long dry season to the less restrictive Cerrado vegetation with a six-month dry season. To unravel the main drivers of leaf phenology and understand how they influence seasonal dynamics (represented by the green color channel (Gcc) vegetation index), we applied Generalized Additive Mixed Models (GAMMs) to estimate the growing seasons, using water deficit and day length as covariates. Our results indicated that plant-water relationships are more important in the caatinga, while light (measured as day-length) was more relevant in explaining leafing patterns in Cerrado communities. Leafing behaviors and predictor-response relationships (distinct smooth functions) were more variable at the less seasonal Cerrado sites, suggesting that different life-forms (grasses, herbs, shrubs, and trees) are capable of overcoming drought through specific phenological strategies and associated functional traits, such as deep root systems in trees. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Phenology)

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26 pages, 2796 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatiotemporal Patterns and Phenology of Tropical Vegetation Solar-Induced Chlorophyll Fluorescence across Brazilian Biomes Using Satellite Observations

by Trina Merrick, Stephanie Pau, Maria Luisa S.P. Jorge, Thiago S. F. Silva and Ralf Bennartz

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(15), 1746; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11151746 - 24 Jul 2019

Cited by 25 | Viewed by 6253

Abstract

Solar-induced fluorescence (SIF) has been empirically linked to gross primary productivity (GPP) in multiple ecosystems and is thus a promising tool to address the current uncertainties in carbon fluxes at ecosystem to continental scales. However, studies utilizing satellite-measured SIF in South America have concentrated on the Amazonian tropical forest, while SIF in other regions and vegetation classes remain uninvestigated. We examined three years of Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) SIF data for vegetation classes within and across the six Brazilian biomes (Amazon, Atlantic Forest, Caatinga, Cerrado, Pampa, and Pantanal) to answer the following: (1) how does satellite-measured SIF differ? (2) What is the relationship (strength and direction) of satellite-measured SIF with canopy temperature (T_can), air temperature (T_air), and vapor pressure deficit (VPD)? (3) How does the phenology of satellite-measured SIF (duration and amplitude of seasonal integrated SIF) compare? Our analysis shows that OCO-2 captures a significantly higher mean SIF with lower variability in the Amazon and lower mean SIF with higher variability in the Caatinga compared to other biomes. OCO-2 also distinguishes the mean SIF of vegetation types within biomes, showing that evergreen broadleaf (EBF) mean SIF is significantly higher than other vegetation classes (deciduous broadleaf (DBF), grassland (GRA), savannas (SAV), and woody savannas (WSAV)) in all biomes. We show that the strengths and directions of correlations of OCO-2 mean SIF to T_can, T_air, and VPD largely cluster by biome: negative in the Caatinga and Cerrado, positive in the Pampa, and no correlations were found in the Pantanal, while results were mixed for the Amazon and Atlantic Forest. We found mean SIF most strongly correlated with VPD in most vegetation classes in most biomes, followed by T_can. Seasonality from time series analysis reveals that OCO-2 SIF measurements capture important differences in the seasonal timing of SIF for different classes, details masked when only examining mean SIF differences. We found that OCO-2 captured the highest base integrated SIF and lowest seasonal pulse integrated SIF in the Amazon for all vegetation classes, indicating continuous photosynthetic activity in the Amazon exceeds other biomes, but with small seasonal increases. Surprisingly, Pantanal EBF SIF had the highest total integrated SIF of all classes in all biomes due to a large seasonal pulse. Additionally, the length of seasons only accounts for about 30% of variability in total integrated SIF; thus, integrated SIF is likely captures differences in photosynthetic activity separate from structural differences. Our results show that satellite measurements of SIF can distinguish important functioning and phenological differences in vegetation classes and thus has the potential to improve our understanding of productivity and seasonality in the tropics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Phenology)

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32 pages, 9976 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Quantifying Leaf Phenology of Individual Trees and Species in a Tropical Forest Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Images

by John Y. Park, Helene C. Muller-Landau, Jeremy W. Lichstein, Sami W. Rifai, Jonathan P. Dandois and Stephanie A. Bohlman

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(13), 1534; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11131534 - 28 Jun 2019

Cited by 82 | Viewed by 13213

Abstract

Tropical forests exhibit complex but poorly understood patterns of leaf phenology. Understanding species- and individual-level phenological patterns in tropical forests requires datasets covering large numbers of trees, which can be provided by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In this paper, we test a workflow combining high-resolution RGB images (7 cm/pixel) acquired from UAVs with a machine learning algorithm to monitor tree and species leaf phenology in a tropical forest in Panama. We acquired images for 34 flight dates over a 12-month period. Crown boundaries were digitized in images and linked with forest inventory data to identify species. We evaluated predictions of leaf cover from different models that included up to 14 image features extracted for each crown on each date. The models were trained and tested with visual estimates of leaf cover from 2422 images from 85 crowns belonging to eight species spanning a range of phenological patterns. The best-performing model included both standard color metrics, as well as texture metrics that quantify within-crown variation, with r² of 0.84 and mean absolute error (MAE) of 7.8% in 10-fold cross-validation. In contrast, the model based only on the widely-used Green Chromatic Coordinate (GCC) index performed relatively poorly (r² = 0.52, MAE = 13.6%). These results highlight the utility of texture features for image analysis of tropical forest canopies, where illumination changes may diminish the utility of color indices, such as GCC. The algorithm successfully predicted both individual-tree and species patterns, with mean r² of 0.82 and 0.89 and mean MAE of 8.1% and 6.0% for individual- and species-level analyses, respectively. Our study is the first to develop and test methods for landscape-scale UAV monitoring of individual trees and species in diverse tropical forests. Our analyses revealed undescribed patterns of high intraspecific variation and complex leaf cover changes for some species. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Phenology)

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17 pages, 4405 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Phenology and Seasonal Ecosystem Productivity in an Amazonian Floodplain Forest

by Letícia D. M. Fonseca, Ricardo Dalagnol, Yadvinder Malhi, Sami W. Rifai, Gabriel B. Costa, Thiago S. F. Silva, Humberto R. Da Rocha, Iane B. Tavares and Laura S. Borma

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(13), 1530; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11131530 - 28 Jun 2019

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 5507

Abstract

Several studies have explored the linkages between phenology and ecosystem productivity across the Amazon basin. However, few studies have focused on flooded forests, which correspond to c.a. 14% of the basin. In this study, we assessed the seasonality of ecosystem productivity (gross primary productivity, GPP) from eddy covariance measurements, environmental drivers and phenological patterns obtained from the field (leaf litter mass) and satellite measurements (enhanced vegetation index (EVI) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer/multi-angle implementation correction (MODIS/MAIAC)) in an Amazonian floodplain forest. We found that ecosystem productivity is limited by soil moisture in two different ways. During the flooded period, the excess of water limits GPP (Spearman’s correlation; rho = −0.22), while during non-flooded months, GPP is positively associated with soil moisture (rho = 0.34). However, GPP is maximized when cumulative water deficit (CWD) increases (rho = 0.81), indicating that GPP is dependent on the amount of water available. EVI was positively associated with leaf litter mass (Pearson’s correlation; r = 0.55) and with GPP (r = 0.50), suggesting a coupling between new leaf production and the phenology of photosynthetic capacity, decreasing both at the peak of the flooded period and at the end of the dry season. EVI was able to describe the inter-annual variations on forest responses to environmental drivers, which have changed during an observed El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) year (2015/2016). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Phenology)

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21 pages, 4403 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

A Comparative Assessment of the Performance of Individual Tree Crowns Delineation Algorithms from ALS Data in Tropical Forests

by Mélaine Aubry-Kientz, Raphaël Dutrieux, Antonio Ferraz, Sassan Saatchi, Hamid Hamraz, Jonathan Williams, David Coomes, Alexandre Piboule and Grégoire Vincent

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(9), 1086; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11091086 - 7 May 2019

Cited by 76 | Viewed by 7383

Abstract

Tropical forest canopies are comprised of tree crowns of multiple species varying in shape and height, and ground inventories do not usually reliably describe their structure. Airborne laser scanning data can be used to characterize these individual crowns, but analytical tools developed for boreal or temperate forests may require to be adjusted before they can be applied to tropical environments. Therefore, we compared results from six different segmentation methods applied to six plots (39 ha) from a study site in French Guiana. We measured the overlap of automatically segmented crowns projection with selected crowns manually delineated on high-resolution photography. We also evaluated the goodness of fit following automatic matching with field inventory data using a model linking tree diameter to tree crown width. The different methods tested in this benchmark segmented highly different numbers of crowns having different characteristics. Segmentation methods based on the point cloud (AMS3D and Graph-Cut) globally outperformed methods based on the Canopy Height Models, especially for small crowns; the AMS3D method outperformed the other methods tested for the overlap analysis, and AMS3D and Graph-Cut performed the best for the automatic matching validation. Nevertheless, other methods based on the Canopy Height Model performed better for very large emergent crowns. The dense foliage of tropical moist forests prevents sufficient point densities in the understory to segment subcanopy trees accurately, regardless of the segmentation method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Tropical Phenology)

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