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Estimating Vegetation Cover from High-Resolution Satellite Data to Assess Grassland Degradation in the Georgian Caucasus
oleh: Martin Wiesmair, Hannes Feilhauer, Anja Magiera, Annette Otte, Rainer Waldhardt
Format: | Article |
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Diterbitkan: | International Mountain Society 2016-02-01 |
Deskripsi
In the Georgian Caucasus, unregulated grazing has damaged grassland vegetation cover and caused erosion. Methods for monitoring and control of affected territories are urgently needed. Focusing on the high-montane and subalpine grasslands of the upper Aragvi Valley, we sampled grassland for soil, rock, and vegetation cover to test the applicability of a site-specific remote-sensing approach to observing grassland degradation. We used random-forest regression to separately estimate vegetation cover from 2 vegetation indices, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Modified Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (MSAVI2), derived from multispectral WorldView-2 data (1.8 m). The good model fit of R2 = 0.79 indicates the great potential of a remote-sensing approach for the observation of grassland cover. We used the modeled relationship to produce a vegetation cover map, which showed large areas of grassland degradation.