Assessing Regional Climate and Local Landcover Impacts on Vegetation with Remote Sensing

Abstract

Landcover change alters not only the surface landscape but also regional carbon and water cycling. The objective of this study was to assess the potential impacts of landcover change across the Kansas River Basin (KRB) by comparing local microclimatic impacts and regional scale climate influences. This was done using a 25-year time series of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and precipitation (PPT) data analyzed using multi-resolution information theory metrics. Results showed both entropy of PPT and NDVI varied along a pronounced PPT gradient. The scalewise relative entropy of NDVI was the most informative at the annual scale, while for PPT the scalewise relative entropy varied temporally and by landcover type. The relative entropy of NDVI and PPT as a function of landcover showed the most information at the 512-day scale for all landcover types, implying different landcover types had the same response across the entire KRB. This implies that land use decisions may dramatically alter the local time scales of responses to global climate change. Additionally, altering land cover (e.g., for biofuel production) may impact ecosystem functioning at local to regional scales and these impacts must be considered for accurately assessing future implications of climate change.

Challenges in Complementing Data from Ground-Based Sensors with Satellite-Derived Products to Measure Ecological Changes in Relation to Climate—Lessons from Temperate Wetland-Upland Landscapes

“…Climate-related remote-sensing or modeling studies commonly use total or cumulative precipitation, but researchers have used a wider variety of ways to summarize air temperature (e.g., [ 79 , 123 , 124 , 125 , 126 , 127 , 128 , 129 , 130 , 131 ]). We used GDU calculated with average daily air temperatures, which we then cumulated over the growing season or used as interval-based events that potentially were relevant as a trigger for the onset of plant growth.…”

Ecohydrological index, native fish, and climate trends and relationships in the Kansas River basin

“…Future shifts in land cover are expected with increasing biofuel demands in the Midwest Corn Belt region. KRB has an average rainfall of about 1,000 mm/year in the east and 400 mm/year in the west (Lin & Brunsell, ). The basin has a wide gradient of soil permeability, with lowest levels in the eastern one third and moderate to high levels in the western two thirds.…”

“…Natural flows in streams and rivers have been impacted by both climate (Gleick & Chalecki, ; Groisman, Knight, & Karl, ; Hodgkins, Dudley, & Huntington, ; Hodgkins, Dudley, & Huntington, ; Novotny & Stefan, ) and human activities (Khedkar, Lutzky, Rathod, Kalyankar, & David, ; Poff, Bledsoe, & Cuhaciyan, ; Poff & Zimmerman, ; Taylor, Seilheimer, & Fisher, ). Climate and landscape change has led to temporal and spatial variations in hydrological regimes across North America (Bower, Hannah, & McGregor, ; Knight, Gain, & Wolfe, ; Lynch et al, ; Poff, ) as well as regionally, including the KRB (Brunsell, Jones, Jackson, & Feddema, ; Lin & Brunsell, ).…”