Quantifying Western U.S. Rangelands as Fractional Components with Multi-Resolution Remote Sensing and In Situ Data

oleh: Matthew Rigge, Collin Homer, Lauren Cleeves, Debra K. Meyer, Brett Bunde, Hua Shi, George Xian, Spencer Schell, Matthew Bobo

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2020-01-01

Deskripsi

Quantifying western U.S. rangelands as a series of fractional components with remote sensing provides a new way to understand these changing ecosystems. Nine rangeland ecosystem components, including percent shrub, sagebrush (<i>Artemisia</i>), big sagebrush, herbaceous, annual herbaceous, litter, and bare ground cover, along with sagebrush and shrub heights, were quantified at 30 m resolution. Extensive ground measurements, two scales of remote sensing data from commercial high-resolution satellites and Landsat 8, and regression tree models were used to create component predictions. In the mapped area (2,993,655 km&#178;), bare ground averaged 45.5%, shrub 15.2%, sagebrush 4.3%, big sagebrush 2.9%, herbaceous 23.0%, annual herbaceous 4.2%, and litter 15.8%. Component accuracies using independent validation across all components averaged <i>R</i><sup>2</sup> values of 0.46 and an root mean squared error (RMSE) of 10.37, and cross-validation averaged <i>R</i><sup>2</sup> values of 0.72 and an RMSE of 5.09. Component composition strongly varies by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) level III ecoregions (<i>n</i> = 32): 17 are bare ground dominant, 11 herbaceous dominant, and four shrub dominant. Sagebrush physically covers 90,950 km&#178;, or 4.3%, of our study area, but is present in 883,449 km&#178;, or 41.5%, of the mapped portion of our study area.