WP2. Mapping and characterising tree communities and environmental factors
© Jean-François Gillet
Vegetation maps of the region date from more than 30 years ago, and are based on the relative proportion of species. Their categorisations have not been unified between countries. Since 1997, new vegetation maps have been derived from satellite imagery, but the underlying tree communities have only been very roughly described.
Activities
- Relate tree species associations identified from the analysis of forest inventories, recent disturbance patterns identified by remote-sensing, data on physical environment, and a map of water availability (from WP3), to produce a map of tree communities, detailing their characteristics in terms of floristic composition and structure, and their links with recent disturbance and physical environment.
- Use recent technological advances – object-oriented classifications of hyperspectral images, long-term seasonality time series at 1 km spatial resolution – to produce a highly detailed remote-sensed vegetation map based on seasonal vegetation activity (degree of deciduousness of the vegetation) and topsoil water content.
- Perform a cross-comparison of the maps to test the relevance of satellite data to predict tree communities, comprising their functional diversity in terms of deciduous/evergreen species relative abundance.
Expected results
Results will provide the first steps to evaluate our core hypotheses, in terms of relationships between recent disturbance, water availability and tree communities’ structure and composition.
7 Apr 2009