Estimating Vegetation Cover from High-Resolution Satellite Data to Assess Grassland Degradation in the Georgian Caucasus
| Autor: | Martin Wiesmair, Hannes Feilhauer, Anja Magiera, Annette Otte, Rainer Waldhardt |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Mountain Research and Development, Vol 36, Iss 1, Pp 56-65 (2016) |
| Druh dokumentu: | article |
| ISSN: | 0276-4741 1994-7151 |
| DOI: | 10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-15-00064.1 |
| Popis: | In the Georgian Caucasus, unregulated grazing has damaged grassland vegetation cover and caused erosion. Methods for monitoring and control of affected territories are urgently needed. Focusing on the high-montane and subalpine grasslands of the upper Aragvi Valley, we sampled grassland for soil, rock, and vegetation cover to test the applicability of a site-specific remote-sensing approach to observing grassland degradation. We used random-forest regression to separately estimate vegetation cover from 2 vegetation indices, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Modified Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (MSAVI2), derived from multispectral WorldView-2 data (1.8 m). The good model fit of R2 = 0.79 indicates the great potential of a remote-sensing approach for the observation of grassland cover. We used the modeled relationship to produce a vegetation cover map, which showed large areas of grassland degradation. |
| Databáze: | Directory of Open Access Journals |
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