Canopy Forest Cover Change in Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve:

Canopy Forest Cover Change in Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve:

• “What measurable environmental changes have taken place after implementing payment for ecosystem programs?”

• How reliably are we able to measure canopy fraction cover (CFC) and change in CFC (ΔCFC) within FNNR based on multitemporal Landsat data?

• Which areas appear to have undergone substantial ΔCFC and what was the cause of this change?

Satellite Data

• Landsat TM/ETM+ for May 2000 and April 2009

• RapidEye multispectral image data for Dec 2009

• High spatial resolution imagery for 2014

• Start building Landsat 8 OLI time series

Canopy Fractional Cover (CFC)

V = Vegetation index (e.g., MSAVI)pixel = given Landsat pixelcanopy = 100% canopy endmemberopen = 100% bare ground endmember

𝐶𝐹𝐶=𝑉 𝑝𝑖𝑥𝑒𝑙−𝑉 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛

𝑉 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑝𝑦−𝑉 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛

Change in Canopy Fractional Cover (ΔCFC)

If:

∆𝐶𝐹𝐶=( 𝑉 𝑝𝑖𝑥𝑒𝑙𝑇 2−𝑉 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑇 2

𝑉 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑝𝑦𝑇 2−𝑉𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑇 2 )−( 𝑉 𝑝𝑖𝑥𝑒𝑙 𝑇 1−𝑉 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑇 1

𝑉𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑝𝑦 𝑇 1−𝑉 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑇 1 )

∆𝐶𝐹𝐶=𝑉 𝑝𝑖𝑥𝑒𝑙 𝑇 2−𝑉 𝑝𝑖𝑥𝑒𝑙 𝑇 1

𝑉 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑝𝑦−𝑉 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛

Analyses

• Explore effects of different radiometric normalization (PIF and histogram matching)

• Explore sensitivity to different canopy and open endmembers

• Compare indirect and direct ΔCFC mapping approaches

• Examine spatial distribution and apparent causes of ΔCFC

Landsat TM Red (x axis) and NIR (y axis) feature space May 2000 (left) and April 2009 (right)