scholarly journals Is Drought Increasing in Maine and Hurting Wild Blueberry Production?

Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 178
Author(s):  
Kallol Barai ◽  
Rafa Tasnim ◽  
Bruce Hall ◽  
Parinaz Rahimzadeh-Bajgiran ◽  
Yong-Jiang Zhang

A few severe drought events occurred in the Northeast (NE) USA in recent decades and caused significant economic losses, but the temporal pattern of drought incidents and their impacts on agricultural systems have not been well assessed. Here, we analyzed historical changes and patterns of drought using a drought index (standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI)), and assessed drought impacts on remotely sensed vegetation indices (enhanced vegetation index (EVI) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)) and production (yield) of the wild blueberry fields in Maine, USA. We also analyzed the impact of short- and long-term water conditions of the growing season on the wild blueberry vegetation condition and production. No significant changes in the SPEI were found in the past 71 years, despite a significant warming pattern. There was also a significant relationship between the relatively long-term SPEI and the vegetation indices (EVI and NDVI), but not the short-term SPEI (one year). This suggests that the crop vigor of wild blueberries is probably determined by water conditions over a relatively long term. There were also significant relationships between 1-year water conditions (SPEI) and yield for a non-irrigated field, and between 4-year-average SPEI and the yield of all fields in Maine. The vegetation indices (EVI and NDVI) are not good predictors of wild blueberry yield, possibly because wild blueberry yield does not only depend on crop vigor, but also on other important variables such as pollination. We also compared an irrigated and a non-irrigated wild blueberry field at the same location (Deblois, Maine) where we found that irrigation decoupled the relationship between the SPEI and NDVI or EVI.

2016 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-150
Author(s):  
Maciej Bartold

Abstract The work presented here aims at developing cover mask for monitoring forest health in Poland using remote sensing data. The main objective was to assess the impact of using the mask on forest condition monitoring combined with vegetation indices obtained from long-term satellite data. In this study, a new mask developed from the CORINE Land Cover 2012 (CLC2012) database is presented and its one-kilometer pixel size matched to low-resolution data derived from SPOT VEGETATION satellite registrations. For vegetation mapping, only pixels with a cover ≥ 50% of broad-leaved and mixed forests defined by CLC2012 were taken into account. The masked pixels were used to evaluate spatial variability in eight Natural-Forest Regions (NFRs). The largest coverages by masked forests were obtained in Sudetian (65.7%), Carpathian (65.9%) and Baltic (51.3%) regions. For other forest regions the coverage was observed to be around 30-50%. Time-series of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) comprising SPOT VEGETATION images from 1998 until 2014 were computed and cross-comparison analyses on ≥ 50% and < 50% forest cover masks brought up frequent differences at a level higher than 0.05 NDVI in seven out of eight NFRs. An exception is the Sudetian region, where the data was highly consistent. Furthermore, the Mann-Whitney U non-parametric test revealed statistically significant differences in two regions: Baltic and Masurian-Podlasie NFR. The comparative analysis of NDVI confirmed that there is a need for additional investigation of the quality of newly developed forest mask combined with vegetation and meteorological data.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1979
Author(s):  
Dandan Xu ◽  
Deshuai An ◽  
Xulin Guo

Leaf area index (LAI) is widely used for algorithms and modelling in the field of ecology and land surface processes. At a global scale, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) products generated by different remote sensing satellites, have provided more than 40 years of time series data for LAI estimation. NDVI saturation issues are reported in agriculture and forest ecosystems at high LAI values, creating a challenge when using NDVI to estimate LAI. However, NDVI saturation is not reported on LAI estimation in grasslands. Previous research implies that non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV) reduces the accuracy of LAI estimation from NDVI and other vegetation indices. A question arises: is the absence of NDVI saturation in grasslands a result of low LAI value, or is it caused by NPV? This study aims to explore whether there is an NDVI saturation issue in mixed grassland, and how NPV may influence LAI estimation by NDVI. In addition, in-situ measured plant area index (PAI) by sensors that detect light interception through the vegetation canopy (e.g., Li-cor LAI-2000), the most widely used field LAI collection method, might create bias in LAI estimation or validation using NDVI. Thus, this study also aims to quantify the contribution of green vegetation (GV) and NPV on in-situ measured PAI. The results indicate that NDVI saturation (using the portion of NDVI only contributed by GV) exists in grassland at high LAI (LAI threshold is much lower than that reported for other ecosystems in the literature), and that the presence of NPV can override the saturation effects of NDVI used to estimate green LAI. The results also show that GV and NPV in mixed grassland explain, respectively, the 60.33% and 39.67% variation of in-situ measured PAI by LAI-2000.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 2879
Author(s):  
Valentine Aubard ◽  
João E. Pereira-Pires ◽  
Manuel L. Campagnolo ◽  
José M. C. Pereira ◽  
André Mora ◽  
...  

Fuel break (FB) networks are strategic locations for fire control and suppression. In order to be effective for wildfire control, they need to be maintained through regular interventions to reduce fuel loads. In this paper, we describe a monitoring system relying on Earth observations to detect fuel reduction inside the FB network being implemented in Portugal. Two fast automated pixel-based methodologies for monthly monitoring of fuel removals in FB are developed and compared. The first method (M1) is a classical supervised classification using the difference and postdisturbance image of monthly image composites. To take into account the impact of different land cover and phenology in the detection of fuel treatments, a second method (M2) based on an innovative statistical change detection approach was developed. M2 explores time series of vegetation indices and does not require training data or user-defined thresholds. The two algorithms were applied to Sentinel-2 10 m bands and fully processed in the cloud-based platform Google Earth Engine. Overall, the unsupervised M2, which is based on a Welch t-test of two moving window averages, gives better results than the supervised M1 and is suitable for an automated countrywide fuel treatment detection. For both methods, two vegetation indices, the Modified Excess of Green and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, were compared and exhibited similar performances.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 31-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shwan O. Hussein ◽  
Ferenc Kovács ◽  
Zalán Tobak

Abstract The rate of global urbanization is exponentially increasing and reducing areas of natural vegetation. Remote sensing can determine spatiotemporal changes in vegetation and urban land cover. The aim of this work is to assess spatiotemporal variations of two vegetation indices (VI), the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), in addition land cover in and around Erbil city area between the years 2000 and 2015. MODIS satellite imagery and GIS techniques were used to determine the impact of urbanization on the surrounding quasi-natural vegetation cover. Annual mean vegetation indices were used to determine the presence of a spatiotemporal trend, including a visual interpretation of time-series MODIS VI imagery. Dynamics of vegetation gain or loss were also evaluated through the study of land cover type changes, to determine the impact of increasing urbanization on the surrounding areas of the city. Monthly rainfall, humidity and temperature changes over the 15-year-period were also considered to enhance the understanding of vegetation change dynamics. There was no evidence of correlation between any climate variable compared to the vegetation indices. Based on NDVI and EVI MODIS imagery the spatial distribution of urban areas in Erbil and the bare around it has expanded. Consequently, the vegetation area has been cleared and replaced over the past 15 years by urban growth.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 2522
Author(s):  
Lkhagvadorj Nanzad ◽  
Jiahua Zhang ◽  
Battsetseg Tuvdendorj ◽  
Shanshan Yang ◽  
Sonam Rinzin ◽  
...  

Drought has devastating impacts on agriculture and other ecosystems, and its occurrence is expected to increase in the future. However, its spatiotemporal impacts on net primary productivity (NPP) in Mongolia have remained uncertain. Hence, this paper focuses on the impact of drought on NPP in Mongolia. The drought events in Mongolia during 2003–2018 were identified using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The Boreal Ecosystem Productivity Simulator (BEPS)-derived NPP was computed to assess changes in NPP during the 16 years, and the impacts of drought on the NPP of Mongolian terrestrial ecosystems was quantitatively analyzed. The results showed a slightly increasing trend of the growing season NPP during 2003–2018. However, a decreasing trend of NPP was observed during the six major drought events. A total of 60.55–87.75% of land in the entire country experienced drought, leading to a 75% drop in NPP. More specifically, NPP decline was prominent in severe drought areas than in mild and moderate drought areas. Moreover, this study revealed that drought had mostly affected the sparse vegetation NPP. In contrast, forest and shrubland were the least affected vegetation types.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murat Aksel ◽  
Mehmet Dikici

Abstract Various drought indices have been developed to monitor the drought, which is one of the results of climate change and mitigates its adverse effects on water resources, especially agriculture. Vegetation indices determined by remote sensing have been the subject of many studies in recent years and shed light on drought risk management. This study is examined in the Seyhan River Basin, a basin with Turkey’s considerable population density counts and is situated south of the country. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) are the most widely used vegetation indices and are very useful because they give results only based on satellite images. This study examined the Seyhan Basin by using satellite data in which the vegetation transformation occurring due to the decline of agricultural and forest areas was also seen. An increase in drought frequency was detected in the Seyhan Basin using NDVI and VCI indices. It was determined that climate change and drought increased with a linear uptrend. It is recommended that decision-makers should take the necessary measures by considering the drought risk maps and that long-term drought management plans should be made and implemented.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunchun An ◽  
Zhi Dong ◽  
Hongli Li ◽  
Wentai Zhao ◽  
Hailiang Chen

Remote sensing phenology retrieval can remedy the deficiencies in field investigations and has the advantage of catching the continuous characteristics of phenology on a large scale. However, there are some discrepancies in the results of remote sensing phenological metrics derived from different vegetation indices based on different extraction algorithms, and there are few studies that evaluate the impact of different vegetation indices on phenological metrics extraction. In this study, three satellite-derived vegetation indices (enhanced vegetation index, EVI; normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI; and normalized difference phenology index, NDPI; calculated using surface reflectance data from MOD09A1) and two algorithms were used to detect the start and end of growing season (SOS and EOS, respectively) in the Tibetan Plateau (TP). Then, the retrieved SOS and EOS were evaluated from different aspects. Results showed that the missing rates of both SOS and EOS based on the Seasonal Trend Decomposition by LOESS (STL) trendline crossing method were higher than those based on the seasonal amplitude method (SA), and the missing rate varied using different vegetation indices among different vegetation types. Also, the temporal and spatial stabilities of phenological metrics based on SA using EVI or NDPI were more stable than those from others. The accuracy assessment based on ground observations showed that phenological metrics based on SA had better agreements with ground observations than those based on STL, and EVI or NDVI may be more appropriate for monitoring SOS than NDPI in the TP, while EOS from NDPI had better agreements with ground-observed EOS. Besides, the phenological metrics over the complex terrain also presented worse performances than those over the flat terrain. Our findings suggest that previous results of inter-annual variability of phenology from a single data or method should be treated with caution.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Faradina Marzukhi ◽  
Nur Nadhirah Rusyda Rosnan ◽  
Md Azlin Md Said

The aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between vegetation indices of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and soil nutrient of oil palm plantation at Felcra Nasaruddin Bota in Perak for future sustainable environment. The satellite image was used and processed in the research. By Using NDVI, the vegetation index was obtained which varies from -1 to +1. Then, the soil sample and soil moisture analysis were carried in order to identify the nutrient values of Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K). A total of seven soil samples were acquired within the oil palm plantation area. A regression model was then made between physical condition of the oil palms and soil nutrients for determining the strength of the relationship. It is hoped that the risk map of oil palm healthiness can be produced for various applications which are related to agricultural plantation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Lauren E. H. Mathews ◽  
Alicia M. Kinoshita

A combination of satellite image indices and in-field observations was used to investigate the impact of fuel conditions, fire behavior, and vegetation regrowth patterns, altered by invasive riparian vegetation. Satellite image metrics, differenced normalized burn severity (dNBR) and differenced normalized difference vegetation index (dNDVI), were approximated for non-native, riparian, or upland vegetation for traditional timeframes (0-, 1-, and 3-years) after eleven urban fires across a spectrum of invasive vegetation cover. Larger burn severity and loss of green canopy (NDVI) was detected for riparian areas compared to the uplands. The presence of invasive vegetation affected the distribution of burn severity and canopy loss detected within each fire. Fires with native vegetation cover had a higher severity and resulted in larger immediate loss of canopy than fires with substantial amounts of non-native vegetation. The lower burn severity observed 1–3 years after the fires with non-native vegetation suggests a rapid regrowth of non-native grasses, resulting in a smaller measured canopy loss relative to native vegetation immediately after fire. This observed fire pattern favors the life cycle and perpetuation of many opportunistic grasses within urban riparian areas. This research builds upon our current knowledge of wildfire recovery processes and highlights the unique challenges of remotely assessing vegetation biophysical status within urban Mediterranean riverine systems.


Author(s):  
Sheree A Pagsuyoin ◽  
Joost R Santos

Water is a critical natural resource that sustains the productivity of many economic sectors, whether directly or indirectly. Climate change alongside rapid growth and development are a threat to water sustainability and regional productivity. In this paper, we develop an extension to the economic input-output model to assess the impact of water supply disruptions to regional economies. The model utilizes the inoperability variable, which measures the extent to which an infrastructure system or economic sector is unable to deliver its intended output. While the inoperability concept has been utilized in previous applications, this paper offers extensions that capture the time-varying nature of inoperability as the sectors recover from a disruptive event, such as drought. The model extension is capable of inserting inoperability adjustments within the drought timeline to capture time-varying likelihoods and severities, as well as the dependencies of various economic sectors on water. The model was applied to case studies of severe drought in two regions: (1) the state of Massachusetts (MA) and (2) the US National Capital Region (NCR). These regions were selected to contrast drought resilience between a mixed urban–rural region (MA) and a highly urban region (NCR). These regions also have comparable overall gross domestic products despite significant differences in the distribution and share of the economic sectors comprising each region. The results of the case studies indicate that in both regions, the utility and real estate sectors suffer the largest economic loss; nonetheless, results also identify region-specific sectors that incur significant losses. For the NCR, three sectors in the top 10 ranking of highest economic losses are government-related, whereas in the MA, four sectors in the top 10 are manufacturing sectors. Furthermore, the accommodation sector has also been included in the NCR case intuitively because of the high concentration of museums and famous landmarks. In contrast, the Wholesale Trade sector was among the sectors with the highest economic losses in the MA case study because of its large geographic size conducive for warehouses used as nodes for large-scale supply chain networks. Future modeling extensions could potentially include analysis of water demand and supply management strategies that can enhance regional resilience against droughts. Other regional case studies can also be pursued in future efforts to analyze various categories of drought severity beyond the case studies featured in this paper.


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