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A method to estimate the structural parameters of windbreaks using remote sensing

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Abstract

Windbreaks are a major component of agroforestry practices and play an important role in agroforestry ecosystems. They can reduce wind velocity and protect shelter crops from wind damage and soil from wind erosion. Porosity is one of the most important structural parameters that affect wind speed and is widely used in the study of wind protection provided by windbreaks. In this paper, a method to estimate porosity using high-resolution satellite imagery is represented. Porosity was difficult to estimate through the direct use of remote sensing data due to the poor relationship with vegetation indices. Thus, two intermediate variables, that is, CL 2 × LAI and CL × LAI × W, which were highly related to porosity, were selected. Leaf area index (LAI) and average tree crown length (CL) were estimated using vegetation indices, and W, which refers to the width of a windbreak, was identified using object-based image analysis. Porosity was estimated using a statistical relationship between porosity and intermediate variables. The average prediction accuracy of the estimated porosity value was 76.104 %. Based on the estimated porosity value, the windbreaks were grouped into three types, and their efficiency of wind protection was evaluated. The evaluation result indicated that the windbreaks have a very good protective structure in the study area and they can effectively shelter crops from wind damage and erosion. This study can provide a useful guide for studying the wind protection provided by windbreaks on spatial and temporal scales using remote sensing.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to Yibo Wen, Zhichao Zhang, and Yuhang Wang for their considerable hard work in the field data collection. This work is financially supported by the Special Fund for Forest Scientific Research in the Public Welfare, Grant Number: 201404202.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Saline-Alkali Vegetation Ecology Restoration in Oil Field (SAVER), Ministry of Education, Alkali Soil Natural Environmental Science Center (ASNESC), Northeast Forestry University, 26 Hexing Rd., Harbin, 150040, China

    Xiguang Yang

  2. Northeast Forestry University, 26 Hexing Rd., Harbin, 150040, China

    Xiguang Yang, Ying Yu & Wenyi Fan

Authors
  1. Xiguang Yang
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  2. Ying Yu
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  3. Wenyi Fan
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiguang Yang or Wenyi Fan.

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Table 7 Eigenvalues and the accumulated variance of the principal component analysis
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Yang, X., Yu, Y. & Fan, W. A method to estimate the structural parameters of windbreaks using remote sensing. Agroforest Syst 91, 37–49 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-016-9904-4

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