Remote Sensing approaches for assessing vegetation stocks and short-term fluxes in the Sub-Arctic permafrost landscape of the Lena River Delta (Siberia)
Abstract
Uncertainty in describing processes that control carbon outputs and their cycling rates in terrestrial ecosystems is a major contributor to overall uncertainty in Earth System Models. Here, we focus on remote sensing approaches to understand the status and dynamics of above-ground carbon related to vegetation as primary producers for the central Lena Delta, Siberia. In ongoing and future Russian-German cooperation on Lena Delta expeditions and with the opportunity of the modern Samoylov research station and new spaceborne satellite missions we evaluate the applicability of remote sensing for assessing vegetation stocks and short-term fluxes in the Lena River Delta.
i) Synoptic mapping of above-ground vegetation biomass for the Lena Delta region: We plan to upscale vegetation cover plot information and in-situ biomass estimates from harvesting to above ground carbon stocks. We use Landsat-8 OLI and Sentinel-2 data for the spatial upscaling. ii) Synoptic monitoring of vegetative regrowth offsetting losses of carbon by spring floods and thermo-erosion using in situ data on vegetation community, biomass, stand age and remote sensing data. iii) Photosynthesis is the starting point of the carbon cycle. Can we assess landscape-scale inherent dynamics of photosynthetic activity for the central Lena Delta region using remote sensing? Remote Sensing vegetation indices, most commonly NDVI are widely used to model the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by vegetation, fPAR, for estimating gross primary productivity, GPP, from remotely sensed data. We investigate the applicability of MODIS NDVI for the tundra landscape of the Lena Delta region. Assessments of the applicability of the remote sensing products will be done using upscaling: UAV-based imagery, higher spatial resolution Rapid Eye and assessing the leaf development, plant shooting and greening by phenological monitoring from time lapse cameras.- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC21E1278H
- Keywords:
-
- 3322 Land/atmosphere interactions;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 0702 Permafrost;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 1637 Regional climate change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1817 Extreme events;
- HYDROLOGY