Detecting contamination-induced tree stress within the Chernobyl exclusion zone

Effect of Bioaccumulation of Cs and Sr Natural Isotopes on Foliar Structure and Plant Spectral Reflectance of Indian Mustard (Brassica Juncea)

“…The leaves of Cs600-treated plants (Figure 1b) show larger intercellular spaces and decrease in number of chloroplasts compared to control plants (Figure 1a). This is consistent with Davids and Tyler's (2003) observation that radionuclide contamination was strongly related to the chlorophyll a concentration in birch leaves. Our results show NDVI (Table I) with an increase in Cs concentration in Cs600-treated plants.…”

“…The highest soil activity concentrations for 137 Cs and 90 Sr field samples are 3,216 and 16.5 kBqm −2 , respectively, as reported by Fuhrmann et al (2002). 137 Cs soil inventories ranging from 137 to at least 24,615 kBqm −2 within the Chernobyl exclusion zone were reported by Davids and Tyler (2003). In a transfer factor study, the highest soil concentrations of Cs and Sr were reported as 8.94 and 259 ppm, respectively (Ban-nai & Muramatsu, 2002).…”

“…Several studies have demonstrated that by analyzing the spectral reflectance of plants, the changes caused by metal stress can be identified (Horler & Barber, 1980;Labovitz, Masuoka, Bell, Siegrist, & Nelson, 1983;Milton, Ager, Eiswerth, & Power, 1989). Davids & Tyler (2003) demonstrated that radionuclide contamination (including 137 Cs and 90 Sr) within the Chernobyl exclusion zone has a measurable effect on the spectral characteristics of silver birch and Scots pine. Their laboratory measurements and field results show that remote sensing has the potential of providing a valuable monitoring technique for assessing the ecological impact of radionuclide contamination.…”

Reflectance Spectroscopy as a Tool for Monitoring Contaminated Soils

“…A large number of studies have reported on spectra of metal-stressed vegetation being clearly different from those of unstressed vegetation. These differences usually include decreases in both NDVI and RVI with increasing plant stress (Davids & Tyler 2003;Dunagan et al 2007), signs of reduced biomass and a shift of the red edge position (REP) (Kooistra et al 2004;Dunagan et al 2007) or red edge slope (Zhou et al 2010), signs of reduced photosynthetic activity due to chlorosis and decreased reflectance in the 700 nm to 2,500 nm wavelength region (Kooistra et al 2003). Some heavy metals which are considered contaminants are also essential micronutrients for all vegetation species, in particular Cu and Zn.…”

Detecting the effects of hydrocarbon pollution in the Amazon forest using hyperspectral satellite images

“…Approaches to using these data include the use of both broad-and narrow-band vegetation indices (e.g., (Blackburn, 2007)) and red edge position location (e.g., (Dawson and Curran, 1998)). Their success may vary between species and pollutant (Steven et al, 1990;Sims and Gamon, 2002), however, previously these techniques have been used to detect vegetation contamination by heavy metals (Kooistra et al, 2003;Rosso et al, 2005), radioactive materials (Davids and Tyler, 2003;Boyd et al, 2006), as well as hydrocarbons (Smith et al, 2005b;Jago et al, 1999;Noomen et al, 2008;Noomen and Skidmore, 2009;Zhu et al, 2013) and herbicides (Dash and Curran, 2006).…”