Remote Sensing Applications in Monitoring of Protected Areas

Protected areas (PAs) have been established worldwide for achieving long-term goals in the conservation of nature with the associated ecosystem services and cultural values. Globally, 15% of the world’s terrestrial lands and inland waters, excluding Antarctica, are designated as PAs. About 4.12% of the global ocean and 10.2% of coastal and marine areas under national jurisdiction are set as marine protected areas (MPAs). Protected lands and waters serve as the fundamental building blocks of virtually all national and international conservation strategies, supported by governments and international institutions. Some of the PAs are the only places that contain undisturbed landscape, seascape and ecosystems on the planet Earth. With intensified impacts from climate and environmental change, PAs have become more important to serve as indicators of ecosystem status and functions. Earth’s remaining wilderness areas are becoming increasingly important buffers against changing conditions. The development of remote sensing platforms and sensors and the improvement in science and technology provide crucial support for the monitoring and management of PAs across the world. In this editorial paper, we reviewed research developments using state-of-the-art remote sensing technologies, discussed the challenges of remote sensing applications in the inventory, monitoring, management and governance of PAs and summarized the highlights of the articles published in this Special Issue

Vegetation Dynamics Revealed by Remote Sensing and Its Feedback to Regional and Global Climate

This book focuses on some significant progress in vegetation dynamics and their response to climate change revealed by remote sensing data. The development of satellite remote sensing and its derived products offer fantastic opportunities to investigate vegetation changes and their feedback to regional and global climate systems. Special attention is given in the book to vegetation changes and their drivers, the effects of extreme climate events on vegetation, land surface albedo associated with vegetation changes, plant fingerprints, and vegetation dynamics in climate modeling

IMPLICATIONS OF MODULATING GLACIERS AND SNOW COVER IN MONGOLIA

Mongolia’s cryosphere (glaciers and snow cover) drives ecosystem services and in turn, supports emerging economies in the water-restricted country. However, as Mongolia experiences long-term drought conditions and an increase in annual air temperatures at twice the global rate, the potential adverse effects of the changing cryosphere during a period of climate uncertainty will have cascading implications to water availability and economic development. Using several data sources and methods, I partitioned my dissertation into two components to determine the hydrologic and economic implications of modulations in Mongolia’s cryosphere. The first component is an examination of glacier recession in Mongolia’s Altai Mountains, where I identified the major drivers of glacier recession and the role of glaciers in the regional hydrology. In the second component we created novel techniques to detect snowmelt events and to determine their role in large annual livestock mortality across Mongolia. In chapter 2 we identified a rate of glacier recession of 6.4 ± 0.4 km2 yr-1 from 1990-2016, resulting in an overall decrease in glacier area of 43%, which were comparable to rates of recession in mountain ranges across Central Asia. In chapter 3 we found that glaciers contributed up to 22% of the regional hydrology in the glaciated Upper Khovd River Basin (UKRB) and glacier melt contributions began to decrease after 2016, suggesting an overall depletion of accumulation zones. In chapter 4, we developed a novel approach to detect snow melt events in Alaska, USA – due to its high satellite coverage, climate monitoring network, and previous existing studies – and produced a gridded geospatial data product. In chapter 5, we expanded on the novel methods developed in chapter 4 to determine the spatio-temporal role of snowmelt events on large annual livestock mortality in Mongolia. Results showed strong correlations between snowmelt events and mortality in the southern Gobi during the fall and the central and western regions during the spring. As Mongolia continues to develop climatically vulnerable economic industries, future modulations in Mongolia’s cryosphere will likely decrease regional water-availability and amplify annual livestock mortality

Seamless Upscaling of the Field-Measured Grassland Aboveground Biomass Based on Gaussian Process Regression and Gap-Filled Landsat 8 OLI Reflectance

The spatially explicit aboveground biomass (AGB) generated through upscaling field measurements is critical for carbon cycle simulation and optimized management of grasslands. However, the spatial gaps that exist in the optical remote sensing data, underutilization of the multispectral data cube and unavailability of uncertainty information hinder the generation of seamless and accurate AGB maps. This study proposes a novel framework to address the above challenges. The proposed framework filled the spatial gaps in the remote sensing data via the consistent adjustment of the climatology to actual observations (CACAO) method. Gaussian process regression (GPR) was used to fully exploit the multispectral data cube and generated the pixelwise uncertainty concurrent with the AGB estimation. A case study in a 100 km × 100 km area located in the Zoige Plateau, China was used to evaluate this framework. The results show that the CACAO method can fill almost all of the gaps, accounting for 93.1% of the study area, with satisfactory accuracy. The generated AGB map from the GPR was characterized by a relatively high accuracy (R2 = 0.64, RMSE = 48.13 g/m2) compared to vegetation index-derived ones, and was accompanied by a corresponding uncertainty map that provides a new source of information on the credibility of each pixel. This study demonstrates the potential of the joint use of gap-filling and machine-learning methods to generate spatially explicit AG

Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Water Quantity and Quality at Small Scale Watersheds

This book was inspired by the Hydrology–H030 Session of the 2019 AGU (America Geophysical Union) Fall Meeting. In recent years, simulating potential future vulnerability and sustainability of water resources due to climate change are mainly focused on global and regional scale watersheds by using climate change scenarios. These scenarios may have low resolution and may not be accurate for local watersheds. This book addresses the impacts of climate change upon water quantity and quality at small scale watersheds. Emphases are on climate-induced water resource vulnerabilities (e.g., flood, drought, groundwater depletion, evapotranspiration, and water pollution) and methodologies (e.g., computer modeling, field measurement, and management practice) employed to mitigation and adapt climate change impacts on water resources. Application implications to local water resource management are also discussed in this book

Land Degradation Assessment with Earth Observation

This Special Issue (SI) on “Land Degradation Assessment with Earth Observation” comprises 17 original research papers with a focus on land degradation in arid, semiarid and dry-subhumid areas (i.e., desertification) in addition to temperate rangelands, grasslands, woodlands and the humid tropics. The studies cover different spatial, spectral and temporal scales and employ a wealth of different optical and radar sensors. Some studies incorporate time-series analysis techniques that assess the general trend of vegetation or the timing and duration of the reduction in biological productivity caused by land degradation. As anticipated from the latest trend in Earth Observation (EO) literature, some studies utilize the cloud-computing infrastructure of Google Earth Engine to cope with the unprecedented volume of data involved in current methodological approaches. This SI clearly demonstrates the ever-increasing relevance of EO technologies when it comes to assessing and monitoring land degradation. With the recently published IPCC Reports informing us of the severe impacts and risks to terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide, the EO scientific community has a clear obligation to increase its efforts to address any remaining gaps—some of which have been identified in this SI—and produce highly accurate and relevant land-degradation assessment and monitoring tools