A 2001–2015 Archive of Fractional Cover of Photosynthetic and Non-Photosynthetic Vegetation for Beijing and Tianjin Sandstorm Source Region

Abstract

Fractional covers of photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic vegetation are key indicators for land degradation surveillance in the dryland of China. However, there are no available, well validated, and multispectral-based products. Aiming for this, we selected the Beijing and Tianjin Sandstorm Source Region as the study area, and utilized the linear spectral mixture model for generating the fractional cover of PV, NPV, and bare soil, with endmember spectra retrieved from the field measured endmember spectral library, SummaryFractional cover of vegetation plays a key role in resisting wind and water erosion, thus it has been widely used as the indicator for land degradation monitoring and assessment. From a functional perspective, vegetation can be categorized as photosynthetic (green leaves) and non-photosynthetic (wood, senescent material, and litter) material [1]. Unlike the well-developed multiple datasets of the fractional cover of PV, the datasets of the fractional cover of NPV are relatively rare, mainly because of the difficulty in differentiating NPV from the soil background, particularly when multispectral sensors are considered. However, NPV is common and widely distributed in the drylands due to the scarce, variable rainfall and low soil fertility. Therefore, simultaneously acquiring the fractional cover of PV and NPV would provide new insights for land degradation surveillance and land management.In this context, an archive of fractional cover of PV and NPV was computed for the Beijing and Tianjin Sandstorm Source Region (BTSSR), with monthly temporal resolution covering 2001

Supplementary material to "The Impact of Hurricane Disturbances on a Tropical Forest: Implementing a Palm Plant Functional Type and Hurricane Disturbance Module in ED2-HuDi V1.0"

“…The three boxed areas correspond to dense forest, disturbed forest, and bare ground according to the natural color images from Landsat satellites (Figure S13) and thus represent the ground cover types of PV, NPV, and BS, respectively. The spectral reflectance of the three ground cover types generally agrees with previous results (Yang et al 2012;Li et al 2017). It shows that bare soil has the largest reflectance at all the six wavelength bands compared with NPV and PV.…”

Distinguishing Photosynthetic and Non-Photosynthetic Vegetation: How Do Traditional Observations and Spectral Classification Compare?

“…This provides confidence in the fractions of PV and NPV derived from the unmixing. Past studies show that PV can be predicted with high accuracy from spectral unmixing while typically NPV is harder to estimate [18,19]. The reflectance measurements were taken in a way to ensure no other materials such as soil or litter would be recorded by the sensor which can cause confusion during unmixing.…”