Suitability of the perpendicular vegetation (PD54) index in the areas in which biological soil crusts are common

Ardavan Ghorbam, David Bruce

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Biological Soil Crusts (BSC) are distributed across three quarters of Australian's land. Previous remotely-sensed studies, which were applied to areas in which BSC occur, either neglected BSC all together or considered BSC species in one group and did this when they were in a dry state. Previous studies have reported that there is a considerable similarity between the spectra of BSC and dry bare soil thus leading to potential misinterpretation. The Perpendicular Vegetation Index (commonly called PD54) was developed in the areas in which BSC were not common. However, some studies have employed this index in the areas in which BSC are common. This study utilized ground-level spectral measurements to synthesize Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery and examined the BSC effects on this index. Results showed that neither individual BSC with background soil, nor 'BSC pattern spectra' affect the vegetation and soil lines. This applies when the percentage cover of BSC varies from 1.69% to 36.99%. Thus, the use of PD54 in the application of grazing gradient analysis can be misleading as the results are insensitive to BSC presence.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication32nd Asian Conference on Remote Sensing 2011, ACRS 2011
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherCurran Associates Inc
Pages1879-1883
Number of pages5
ISBN (Print)9781618394972
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Externally publishedYes
Event32nd Asian Conference on Remote Sensing 2011, ACRS 2011 - Tapei, Taiwan, Republic of China
Duration: 3 Oct 20117 Oct 2011

Publication series

Name32nd Asian Conference on Remote Sensing 2011, ACRS 2011
Volume3

Conference

Conference32nd Asian Conference on Remote Sensing 2011, ACRS 2011
Country/TerritoryTaiwan, Republic of China
CityTapei
Period3/10/117/10/11

Keywords

  • Indices
  • Land cover change
  • Rangeland monitoring

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