Plant beta-diversity across biomes captured by imaging spectroscopy

Abstract

Abstract Monitoring the rapid and extensive changes in plant species distributions occurring worldwide requires large-scale, continuous and repeated biodiversity assessments. Imaging spectrometers are at the core of novel spaceborne sensor fleets designed for this task, but the degree to which they can capture plant species composition and diversity across ecosystems has yet to be determined. Here we use imaging spectroscopy and vegetation data collected by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to show that at the landscape level, spectral beta-diversity—calculated directly from spectral images—captures changes in plant species composition across all major biomes in the United States ranging from arctic tundra to tropical forests. At the local level, however, the relationship between spectral alpha- and plant alpha-diversity was positive only at sites with high canopy density and large plant-to-pixel size. Our study demonstrates that changes in plant species composition and diversity can be effectively and reliably assessed with imaging spectroscopy across terrestrial ecosystems at the beta-diversity scale—the spatial scale of spaceborne missions—paving the way for close-to-real-time biodiversity monitoring at the planetary level.

Plant phenotyping relevance

画像分光から算出したスペクトル多様性を植物種組成・多様性に対して検証し、広域での植物状態評価手法として中核的に扱っているため。

Code and data availability

The paper's analysis code is publicly available in two author GitHub repositories (specdiv and NEON_crown_area, both Zenodo-archived), and all phenotyping measurements (NEON spectral imagery and plant inventory data) are publicly available from NEON's data portal.