Linking terrace geomorphology and canopy characteristics in the Peruvian Amazon using high resolution airborne remote sensing (Invited)
Abstract
The Peruvian Amazon is home to over half a million square kilometers of forest, nearly three quarters of which is supported by terrace landforms with variable histories. Characteristics of these terrace ecosystems have been contrasted with neighboring floodplain systems along riverine transportation corridors, but the ecological complexity within these terrace landscapes has remained largely unexplored. Airborne remote measurements provide an opportunity to consider the relationship between forest canopy characteristics and geomorphic gradients at high resolution over large spatial extents. In 2011 the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) was used to map a large section of intact lowland humid tropical forest in the southwestern Peruvian Amazon, including over nine thousand hectares of terrace forest. The CAO collected high-fidelity imaging spectroscopy data with its Visible-Shortwave Imaging Spectrometer (VSWIR) and digital elevation and canopy structure data with its high-resolution dual waveform LiDAR. These data, supplemented with field data collection, were used to quantify relationships between forest canopy traits and geomorphic gradients. Results suggest that both spectral properties of the canopy with known relationships to canopy chemistry, including pigment and nutrient concentrations, and canopy structural traits, including vegetation height and leaf area, are associated with geomorphic characteristics of this terrace landscape.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFM.B13L..06C
- Keywords:
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- 0480 BIOGEOSCIENCES Remote sensing;
- 0439 BIOGEOSCIENCES Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- 0470 BIOGEOSCIENCES Nutrients and nutrient cycling;
- 1625 GLOBAL CHANGE Geomorphology and weathering