Improved Methods for Monitoring Vegetation Structure and Change for Input to Landscape-Scale Ecosystem Process Models

人们日益认识到全球环境保护的步伐不断加快， 变化突出表明需要有效的手段来监测和 分析世界各地自然条件的变化。 卫星 图像和其他形式的遥感大大增加了 可用于跟踪自然条件变化的原始数据量， 但是将这些数据转换为有用信息的技术 评估自然模式和过程的变化已经变得缓慢， 发展。 该项目将改进和完善测量方法 干旱和半干旱地区植被许多属性的变化 地区 通过评估反射特性和位置 不同类型的植被模式，调查人员应 能够制定标准规则， 用于更准确地绘制植被分布图 模式. 通过分析同一区域随时间推移拍摄的图像， 可以绘制植被模式的变化图， 植被变化的过程。 这 项目将由合作者与 新墨西哥州Jornada长期生态保护区的生态学家。 这一研究将有利于从方法和 实质性的立场。 更多的属性分析 可靠地识别植被将有价值的所有学者研究 植被模式 通过使用这些信息来改进和测试 生态系统变化的模型，这项研究也将有利于那些 寻求提高对各种各样的作用的理解， 生态变化的因素。

Growing awareness of the accelerating pace of global environmental change has heightened the need for effective means to monitor and analyze changes in natural conditions throughout the world. Satellite imagery and other forms of remote sensing have greatly increased the amount of raw data available for tracing changes in natural conditions, but techniques for converting that data in useful information necessary to evaluate changes in natural patterns and processes have been slower to develop. This project will improve and refine methods for measuring changes in many of the attributes of vegetation in arid and semiarid regions. By evaluating the reflectance properties and locational patterns of different types of vegetation, the investigator should be able to develop standard rules that will enable remotely sensed images across larger areas to be used to more accurately map vegetational patterns. By analyzing images of the same area taken over time, changes in vegetational patterns can be mapped and more direct analyses of the processes of vegetational change can be undertaken. This project will be undertaken by the collaborator in collaboration with ecologists at the Jornada Long-Term Ecological Reserve in New Mexico. This research will be beneficial from both methodological and substantive standpoints. The analysis of properties that more reliably identify vegetation will be of value to all scholars studying vegetational patterns. By using this information to improve and test models of ecosystem change, this research also will benefit those seeking to increase understandings of the roles of a wide range of factors in ecological change.