Quantifying Vegetation Stress from the Leaf to Landscape Scale: Integrating Lab/Field Observations, Radiative Transfer Modelling, and UAV Hyperspectral Imaging System

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Given the global importance of grasslands and forests, the projections of increased future disturbances, and the need to inform conservation mechanisms, it is vital to explore and develop remote sensing techniques to identify plant stress as well as characterize the underlying causes of stress in large geographical areas over time. Past remote sensing studies observed spectral changes in plants in response to stress, but made little effort to explain optical changes underpinning the evolved spectra. Without an understanding of why plant spectra differ, it is challenging to predict the negative impacts of stress on the physiological processes within the plant. Expanding my previous work in vegetation remote sensing, I propose an interdisciplinary 5-year program to quantitatively measure plant optical properties at various lifecycle stages and to import these findings into a robust radiative transfer modelling framework that permits absorbance and scattering of plant stress pigments to be dynamic. The specific goal is to use lab experiments, field data, UAV-based hyperspectral images, and radiative transfer models to identify early stress, and monitor the effects of disturbance on vegetation across time. The disturbance events this study will focus on are 1) the Emerald Ash borer infestation across Ontario forests, and 2) the projected drought over Canadian grasslands. No similar system, providing explicit information across space and time for forests and grasslands, has been developed. As a result, the proposed program will support both immediate and long-term research that will improve forest and grassland resource management and fundamentally increase our ability to adapt to, and manage, the negative impacts of disturbance events on Canadian vegetative ecosystems.