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Remote sensing of protected areas to derive baseline vegetation functioning characteristics
Author(s) -
Garbulsky Martín F.,
Paruelo José M.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of vegetation science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1654-1103
pISSN - 1100-9233
DOI - 10.1111/j.1654-1103.2004.tb02313.x
Subject(s) - normalized difference vegetation index , biome , environmental science , primary production , evapotranspiration , vegetation (pathology) , ecosystem , precipitation , terrestrial ecosystem , steppe , physical geography , atmospheric sciences , climate change , climatology , geography , ecology , meteorology , medicine , archaeology , pathology , geology , biology
Question: How can we derive baseline/reference situations to evaluate the impact of global change on terrestrial ecosystem functioning? Location: Main biomes (steppes to rain forests) of Argentina. Methods: We used AVHRR/NOAA satellite data to characterize vegetation functioning. We used the seasonal dynamics of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index ( NDVI ), a linear estimator of the fraction of the photosynthetic active radiation intercepted by vegetation ( f PAR ), and the surface temperature ( Ts ), for the period 1981–1993. We extracted the following indices: NDVI integral ( NDVI ‐I), NDVI relative range ( R rel ), NDVI maximum value ( V max ), date of maximum NDVI ( D max ) and actual evapotranspiration. Results:fPAR varied from 2 to 80%, in relation to changes in net primary production ( NPP ) from 83 to 1700 g.m‐ 2 .yr ‐1 . NDVI ‐I, Vmax and f PAR had positive, curvilinear relationships to mean annual precipitation ( MAP ), NPP was linearly related to MAP. Tropical and subtropical biomes had a significantly lower seasonality ( R rel ) than temperate ones. D max was not correlated with the defined environmental gradients. Evapotranspiration ranged from 100 to 1100 mm.yr ‐1 . Interannual variability of NDVI attributes varied across the temperature and precipitation gradients. Conclusions: Our results may be used to represent baseline conditions in evaluating the impact of land use changes across environmental gradients. The relationships between functional attributes and environmental variables provide a way to extrapolate ecological patterns from protected areas across modified habitats and to generate maps of ecosystem functioning.