International Journal of Biometeorology

, Volume 56, Issue 2, pp 343–355 | Cite as

Photographic assessment of temperate forest understory phenology in relation to springtime meteorological drivers

Original Paper
First Online:
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Abstract

Phenology shows sensitive responses to seasonal changes in atmospheric conditions. Forest understory phenology, in particular, is a crucial component of the forest ecosystem that interacts with meteorological factors, and ecosystem functions such as carbon exchange and nutrient cycling. Quantifying understory phenology is challenging due to the multiplicity of species and heterogeneous spatial distribution. The use of digital photography for assessing forest understory phenology was systematically tested in this study within a temperate forest during spring 2007. Five phenology metrics (phenometrics) were extracted from digital photos using three band algebra and two greenness percentage (image binarization) methods. Phenometrics were compared with a comprehensive suite of concurrent meteorological variables. Results show that greenness percentage cover approaches were relatively robust in capturing forest understory green-up. Derived spring phenology of understory plants responded to accumulated air temperature as anticipated, and with day-to-day changes strongly affected by estimated moisture availability. This study suggests that visible-light photographic assessment is useful for efficient forest understory phenology monitoring and allows more comprehensive data collection in support of ecosystem/land surface models.

Keywords

Landscape phenology Forest understory Temperate forest Digital photography EOS Land Validation Core Sites 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

Eric Graham provided insight regarding digital photo processing. Danlin Yu provided important advice on data analysis. Geoffrey M. Henebry reviewed the manuscript and offered valuable comments. Yanbing Zheng provided valuable support in statistical analysis. Thomas Barnes helped identifying understory plant species. We also thank the five anonymous reviewers who provided constructive comments. The research was partly supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, BCS-0703360.

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Copyright information

© ISB 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of ForestryUniversity of KentuckyLexingtonUSA
  2. 2.Department of GeographyUniversity of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeMilwaukeeUSA
  3. 3.Department of ForestryUniversity of KentuckyLexingtonUSA

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