Near surface spectral measurements of the land surface

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Near surface spectral measurements of the land
surface

• Heidi Steltzer
• steltzer_at_nrel.colostate.edu
• Plant and Ecosystem Ecologist
• Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL)

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SpecNet a spectral network

• http//specnet.info

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Advantages of near surface spectral measurements

• Scaling
• Spatial
• fine resolution imagery
• pure pixels
• Temporal
• frequent observations

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Spatial variability in plant coverComplex or
brief growing season
Short grass steppe
Patterned ground in the Arctic
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Multi-spectral digital camera to structure
sampling
NDVI is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
Images are 20 cm x 20 cm plots in a polar
desert ecosystem
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New tool non-destructive measurements of the
leaf area index
Steltzer and Welker (2006) Ecology
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Experimental manipulations of climate and other
global changes
Polar desert
Alpine tundra
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Plant cover as a continuous variable
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Phenological variation NDVI vs day of year
Lines are different years, data was collected
using a near surface multi-band radiation sensor
Data from Barrow, AK Huemmrich et al
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Environmental sensor networks

• An LED pyranometer for 20
• Can be converted to measure NDVI or other
  vegetation indexes

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Needs

• Variables of interest
• Vegetation and soils
• Microbial communities, biological diversity
• Direct and indirect assessment
• models
• Instrumentation
• Sensors
• Platforms
• Sensor networks
• Data
• Automated analysis of imagery
• Bioinformatics/data management

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Acknowledgements

• National Science Foundation
• Office of Polar Programs
• Tetracam Inc.
• Joe DeCant
• Jeff Welker
• Rich Conant
• Fred Hummerich and other Specnetters
• Seth Munson
• NREL