Predicting tropical dry forest successional attributes from space: is the key hidden in image texture?

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity conservation and ecosystem-service provision will increasingly depend on the existence of secondary vegetation. Our success in achieving these goals will be determined by our ability to accurately estimate the structure and diversity of such communities at broad geographic scales. We examined whether the texture (the spatial variation of the image elements) of very high-resolution satellite imagery can be used for this purpose. In 14 fallows of different ages and one mature forest stand in a seasonally dry tropical forest landscape, we estimated basal area, canopy cover, stem density, species richness, Shannon index, Simpson index, and canopy height. The first six attributes were also estimated for a subset comprising the tallest plants. We calculated 40 texture variables base

SUBMITTER: Gallardo-Cruz JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3282724 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature