Near surface spectral measurements of the land surface Heidi Steltzer Plant and Ecosystem Ecologist Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL)

SpecNet – a spectral network

Advantages of near surface spectral measurements Scaling –Spatial fine resolution imagery pure pixels –Temporal frequent observations

Spatial variability in plant cover Complex or brief growing season Short grass steppe Patterned ground in the Arctic

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

New tool: non-destructive measurements of the leaf area index Steltzer and Welker (2006) Ecology

Experimental manipulations of climate and other global changes Alpine tundra Polar desert

Plant cover as a continuous variable

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

Environmental sensor networks An LED pyranometer for $20 Can be converted to measure NDVI or other vegetation indexes

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

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