Remote sensing as surrogate for phylodiversity and functional processes along land use and elevation gradients

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The proposed project aims at investigating how changes in land use and elevation affects the functional and phylodiversity of trees, ants and birds and how this translates into the associated processes in particular herbivory and predation. As it is time consuming to quantify these measures of biodiversity and processes we need a simple indicator system for routine monitoring across large areas. New developments in remote sensing provide promising information for predicting biodiversity as well as ecosystem processes. Spectral diversity derived from remote sensing is for example positively linked to biochemical diversity of trees. In addition, the vegetation reacts on subtle changes due to herbivory by detectable changes in netto primary production and leaf pigment status. Therefore, we expect that we can predict variables describing the status of biodiversity as well as certain processes by measures of spectral and structural diversity derived from remote sensing. This would provide the ground to develop a simple and integrative indicator for ecosystem services. Such an indicator system based on remote sensing would be an important step towards an integrative monitoring of the status of biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and finally ecosystem services that can be used across large areas and even in areas with rough terrains.