Reconciling In Situ Foliar Nitrogen and Vegetation Structure Measurements with Airborne Imagery Across Ecosystems

Abstract:

Over the next 30 years the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) will monitor environmental and ecological change throughout North America. NEON will provide a suite of standardized data from several ecological topics of interest, including net primary productivity and nutrient cycling, from 60+ sites across 20 eco-climatic domains when fully operational in 2017. The breadth of sampling includes ground-based measurements of foliar nitrogen and vegetation structure, ground-based spectroscopy, airborne LIDAR, and airborne hyperspectral surveys occurring within narrow overlapping time intervals once every five years. While many advancements have been made in linking and scaling in situ data with airborne imagery, establishing these relationships across dozens of highly variable sites poses significant challenges to understanding continental-wide processes. Here we study the relationship between foliar nitrogen content and airborne hyperspectral imagery at different study sites. NEON collected foliar samples from three sites in 2014 as part of a prototype study: Ordway Swisher Biological Station (pine-oak savannah, with active fire management), Jones Ecological Research Center (pine-oak savannah), and San Joaquin Experimental Range (grass-pine oak woodland). Leaf samples and canopy heights of dominant and co-dominant species were collected from trees located within 40 x 40 meter sampling plots within two weeks of aerial LIDAR and hyperspectral surveys. Foliar canopy samples were analyzed for leaf mass per area (LMA), stable isotopes of C and N, C/N content. We also examine agreement and uncertainty between ground based canopy height and airborne LIDAR derived digital surface models (DSM) for each site. Site-scale maps of canopy nitrogen and canopy height will also be presented.