Species diversity, regeneration and dominance as influenced by canopy gaps and their characteristics in tropical evergreen forests of Western Ghats, India

Canopy gaps play a significant role in maintaining structure and composition of tropical forests. This study was carried out in tropical evergreen forests of central Western Ghats in India to understand the influence of canopy gap size and the relationship of gap regime attributes to diversity measures and regeneration. The average gap size in the study area was found to be 396 m2 and around half of gaps were 4–8 years old. Gaps created by natural single tree fall were smaller in size but significantly higher in number. Diversity and regeneration of woody species were compared with canopy gaps and intact vegetation. Species richness and diversity was higher in gaps than in intact vegetation. Macaranga peltata, a shade intolerant species dominated gaps while intact vegetation was dominated by shade tolerant Kingiodendron pinnatum.Gap size significantly influenced species diversity and regeneration. Gap area and age were significantly and negatively correlated with diversity measures but positively correlated with regeneration. Among all the attributes of gaps, regeneration was significantly positively correlated with light intensity. Gaps maintained species diversity and favored regeneration of woody species. In addition to gap size and age, other gap ecological attributes also affected species diversity and regeneration.

Inversion of Biochemical Parameters by Selection of Proper Vegetation Index in Winter Wheat

Recent studies have demonstrated the application of vegetation indices from canopy reflectedspectrum for inversion of chlorophyll concentration. Some indices are both response tovariations of vegetation and environmental factors. Canopy chlorophyll concentration, anindicator of photosynthesis activity, is related to nitrogen concentration in green vegetationand serves as an indicator of the crop response to soil nitrogen fertilizer application. Thecombination of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and photochemical reflectanceindex (PRI) can reduce the effect of leaf area index (LAI) and soil background. The canopychlorophyll inversion index (CCII) was proved to be sensitive to chlorophyll concentration andvery resistant to the other variations. This paper introduced the ratio of TCARI/OSAVI to makeaccurate predictions of winter wheat chlorophyll concentration under different cultivars. Itindicated that canopy chlorophyll concentration could be evaluated by some combined vegetationindices.

Characterization of ASTER GDEM elevation data over vegetated area compared with lidar data

Current researches based on areal or spaceborne stereo images with very high resolutions(<1 m)have demonstrated that it is possible to derive vegetation height from stereo images.The second version of the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer Global Digital Elevation Model(ASTER GDEM)is the state-of-the-art global elevation data-set developed by stereo images.However,the resolution of ASTER stereo images(15 m)is much coarser than areal stereo images,and the ASTER GDEM is compiled products from stereo images acquired over 10 years.The forest disturbances as well as forest growth are inevitable in 10 years time span.In this study,the features of ASTER GDEM over vegetated areas under both flat and mountainous conditions were investigated by comparisons with lidar data.The factors possibly affecting the extraction of vegetation canopy height considered include(1)co-registration of DEMs;(2)spatial resolution of digital elevation models(DEMs);(3)spatial vegetation structure;and(4)terrain slope.The results show that the accurate coregistration between ASTER GDEM and national elevation dataset(NED)is necessary over mountainous areas.The correlation between ASTER GDEM minus NED and vegetation canopy height is improved from 0.328 to 0.43 by degrading resolutions from 1 arc-second to 5 arc-second and further improved to 0.6 if only homogenous vegetated areas were considered.