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Assessing Canopy Processes at Large Landscape Scales in the Western Ghats Using Remote Sensing

Abstract

Forest canopy processes such as seasonal foliar phenology, interannual changes in photosynthetic activity, and leaf area index in tropical seasonal forests are linked with changes in associated processes such as transpiration and are often responses to changes in availability of soil and groundwater (Iturbe and Porporato 2004). Furthermore, there is now clear evidence that trees may redistribute moisture through hydraulic redistribution both laterally and vertically in the soil profile from relatively higher soil moisture potential sites to sites with lower soil water potential (Neumann et al. 2012).

Keywords

  • Evapotranspiration
  • Plant-available moisture
  • NDVI
  • Western Ghats

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References

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Acknowledgments 

M.C. Kiran of the Eco-informatic laboratory at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) helped generate the figures.

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Correspondence to Jagdish Krishnaswamy .

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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Krishnaswamy, J. (2013). Assessing Canopy Processes at Large Landscape Scales in the Western Ghats Using Remote Sensing. In: Lowman, M., Devy, S., Ganesh, T. (eds) Treetops at Risk. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7161-5_28

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