Lukas W. Lehnert

Land cover change in the Andes of southern Ecuador - patterns and drivers.

In the megadiverse tropical mountain forest in the Andes of southern Ecuador, a global biodiversity hotspot, the use of fire to clear land for cattle ranching is leading to the invasion of an aggressive weed, the bracken fern, which is threatening diversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services. To find sustainable land use options adapted to the local situation, a profound knowledge of the long-term spatiotemporal patterns of land cover change and its drivers is necessary, but hitherto lacking. The complex topography and the high cloud frequency make the use of remote sensing in this area a challenge. To deal with these conditions, we pursued specific pre-processing steps before classifying five Landsat scenes from 1975 to 2001. Then, we quantified land cover changes and habitat fragmentation, and we investigated landscape changes in relation to key spatial elements (altitude, slope, and distance from roads). Good classification results were obtained with overall accuracies ranging from 94.5% to 98.5% and Kappa statistics between 0.75 and 0.98. Forest was strongly fragmented due to the rapid expansion of the arable frontier and the even more rapid invasion by bracken. Unexpectedly, more bracken-infested areas were converted to pastures than vice versa, a practice that could alleviate pressure on forests if promoted. Road proximity was the most important spatial element determining forest loss, while for bracken the altitudinal range conditioned the degree of invasion in deforested areas. The annual deforestation rate changed notably between periods: ~1.5% from 1975 to 1987, ~0.8% from 1987 to 2000, and finally a very high rate of ~7.5% between 2000 and 2001. We explained these inconstant rates through some specific interrelated local and national political and socioeconomic drivers, namely land use policies, credit and tenure incentives, demography, and in particular, a severe national economic and bank crisis.

Climate variability rather than overstocking causes recent large scale cover changes of Tibetan pastures

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is a globally important “water tower” that provides water for nearly 40% of the world’s population. This supply function is claimed to be threatened by pasture degradation on the TP and the associated loss of water regulation functions. However, neither potential large scale degradation changes nor their drivers are known. Here, we analyse trends in a high-resolution dataset of grassland cover to determine the interactions among vegetation dynamics, climate change and human impacts on the TP. The results reveal that vegetation changes have regionally different triggers: While the vegetation cover has increased since the year 2000 in the north-eastern part of the TP due to an increase in precipitation, it has declined in the central and western parts of the TP due to rising air temperature and declining precipitation. Increasing livestock numbers as a result of land use changes exacerbated the negative trends but were not their exclusive driver. Thus, we conclude that climate variability instead of overgrazing has been the primary cause for large scale vegetation cover changes on the TP since the new millennium. Since areas of positive and negative changes are almost equal in extent, pasture degradation is not generally proceeding.

Mapping Two Competing Grassland Species from a Low-Altitude Helium Balloon

This paper describes a method of low-altitude remote sensing in combination with in situ measurements (leaf area, spectroscopy, and position) to monitor the postfire canopy recovery of two competing grassland species. The method was developed in the Andes of Ecuador, where a tethered balloon with a digital camera was deployed to record a time series of very high spatial resolution imagery (nominal resolution=2 cm ) of an experimental plot covered by two competing species: 1) the pasture grass, Setaria sphacelata; and 2) the invasive southern bracken, Pteridium arachnoideum. Image processing techniques were combined to solve geometric issues and construct high-quality mosaics for image classification. The semiautomatic and object-oriented classification method was based on geometrical and textural attributes of image segments and showed promising results for detecting the invasive bracken fern in Setaria pastures (performance by area under the curve, AUC = 0.88). Valuable insights are given into vegetation monitoring applications using unmanned aerial vehicles, which produces a time series of species-specific maps, including foliage projective cover (FPC) and leaf area index (LAI). This new method constitutes an important and accessible tool for ecological investigations of competing species in pastures and validation of remote sensing information on mountain environments.

Assessing pasture quality and degradation status using hyperspectral imaging: a case study from western Tibet

Alpine grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) are suffering from pasture degradation induced by over-grazing, climate change and improper livestock management. Meanwhile, the status of pastures is largely unknown especially in poor accessible western parts on the TP. The aim of this case study was to assess the suitability of hyperspectral imaging to predict quality and amount of forage on the western TP. Therefore, 18 ground- based hyperspectral images taken along two transects on a winter pasture were used to estimate leaf chlorophyll content, photosynthetic-active vegetation cover (PV) and proportion of grasses. For calibration and validation purposes, chlorophyll content of 20 grass plants was measured in situ. From the images reference spectra of grass and non-grass species were collected. PV was assessed from similarity of images to mean vegetation spectra using spectral angle mapper and threshold classifications. A set of 48 previously published hyperspectral vegetation indices (VI) was used as predictors to estimate chlorophyll content and to discriminate grass and non-grass pixels. Separation into grass and non-grass species was performed using partial least squares (PLS) discriminant analysis and chlorophyll content was estimated with PLS regression. The accuracy of the models was assessed with leave-one-out cross validation and normalised root mean square errors (nRMSE) for chlorophyll and contingency matrices for grass classification and total PV separation. Highest error rates were observed for discrimination between vegetated and non-vegetated parts (Overall accuracy = 0.85), whilst accuracies of grass and non grass separation (Overall accuracy = 0.98) and chlorophyll estimation were higher (nRMSE = 10.7).

The Kobresia pygmaea ecosystem of the Tibetan highlands – Origin, functioning and degradation of the world's largest pastoral alpine ecosystem: Kobresia pastures of Tibet

With 450,000 km2Kobresia (syn. Carex) pygmaea dominated pastures in the eastern Tibetan highlands are the worlds largest pastoral alpine ecosystem forming a durable turf cover at 3000-6000 m a.s.l. Kobresias resilience and competitiveness is based on dwarf habit, predominantly below-ground allocation of photo assimilates, mixture of seed production and clonal growth, and high genetic diversity. Kobresia growth is co-limited by livestock-mediated nutrient withdrawal and, in the drier parts of the plateau, low rainfall during the short and cold growing season. Overstocking has caused pasture degradation and soil deterioration over most parts of the Tibetan highlands and is the basis for this man-made ecosystem. Natural autocyclic processes of turf destruction and soil erosion are initiated through polygonal turf cover cracking, and accelerated by soil-dwelling endemic small mammals in the absence of predators. The major consequences of vegetation cover deterioration include the release of large amounts of C, earlier diurnal formation of clouds, and decreased surface temperatures. These effects decrease the recovery potential of Kobresia pastures and make them more vulnerable to anthropogenic pressure and climate change. Traditional migratory rangeland management was sustainable over millennia, and possibly still offers the best strategy to conserve and possibly increase C stocks in the Kobresia turf.

Future Provisioning Services: Repasturisation of Abandoned Pastures, Problems, and Pasture Management

More and more pastures in the Rio San Francisco valley were and still are abandoned as a result of ecologically unbalanced pasture management, which promotes the invasion of weeds like bracken. Under the common pasture management, using fire as an agricultural tool, bracken by virtue of several ecophysiological traits can outcompete the grass. Competition of both species was investigated by the growth model SoBraCoMo. Vegetation development after burning of a bracken-infected pasture was followed by automated monitoring, using a balloon. To rehabilitate abandoned pastures, a three-step experiment was performed. Bracken control was followed by planting of the pasture grass Setaria sphacelata. Subsequently, different strategies for pasture management were examined. Fertilisation was crucial for the achievement of reasonable yields as well as for bracken suppression. Additionally, the prevention of negative nutrient balances of active pastures was investigated in an extended pasture fertilisation experiment (FERPAST). A specific combination of N and P is necessary to maintain soil productivity and to increase fodder quality.

Measuring pasture degradation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau using hyperspectral dissimilarities and indices

Despite that relevance of pasture degradation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is widely postulated, its extent is still unknown. However, livestock grazing is widely accepted as a major factor. This study investigated spectral differences of vegetation patterns along gradients of grazing intensities using plot-based hyperspectral measurements. The measurements were used to define spectral indicators for pasture degradation, which were applied to map asserted proxies for degradation from satellite images. For this purpose, hyperspectral measurements were taken at 11 sites on the north-eastern QTP using a transect design from heavy grazing and therefore asserted degradation near the settlement to less degradation with increasing distance. Potential spectral indicators for degradation were derived from the spectra by calculating the size of continuum removed absorption features and narrow-band indices (NBI). They were compared between degraded and less degraded plots. Linear regressions between proxies and each of the potential spectral indicators were calculated to assess its predictive power. The findings were transferred to larger scales by applying the indicators on two WorldView-2 (WV-2) scenes. Spectral differences between degraded and less degraded plots were obvious regarding a wide range of tested indicators. Several NBIs were considered as good indicators for vegetation cover and species numbers. WV-2 images could be successfully classified into vegetation cover whilst the estimation of species numbers was afflicted with uncertainties. The results demonstrate the potential to estimate degradation proxies using spectrometer measurements and satellite data. Applying these techniques will contribute to a better estimation of spatial degradation patterns on the QTP.

Estimating Net Photosynthesis of Biological Soil Crusts in the Atacama Using Hyperspectral Remote Sensing

Biological soil crusts (BSC) encompassing green algae, cyanobacteria, lichens, bryophytes, heterotrophic bacteria and microfungi are keystone species in arid environments because of their role in nitrogen- and carbon-fixation, weathering and soil stabilization, all depending on the photosynthesis of the BSC. Despite their importance, little is known about the BSCs of the Atacama Desert, although especially crustose chlorolichens account for a large proportion of biomass in the arid coastal zone, where photosynthesis is mainly limited due to low water availability. Here, we present the first hyperspectral reflectance data for the most wide-spread BSC species of the southern Atacama Desert. Combining laboratory and field measurements, we establish transfer functions that allow us to estimate net photosynthesis rates for the most common BSC species. We found that spectral differences among species are high, and differences between the background soil and the BSC at inactive stages are low. Additionally, we found that the water absorption feature at 1420 nm is a more robust indicator for photosynthetic activity than the chlorophyll absorption bands. Therefore, we conclude that common vegetation indices must be taken with care to analyze the photosynthesis of BSC with multispectral data.