Abstract
This paper presents a time series study of vegetative composition change in an alpine ecosystem in the Big Pine Creek watershed in California’s Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountain’s. Sixteen sample sites that demonstrated same directional trends in their visible and near-IR responses were examined for changes species composition over the last 30 years using spectral mixture analysis to evaluate how warming temperatures have altered the vegetative mix of those sites. These findings are used to establish the relationship between trends in spectral reflectance and changes in vegetative composition. We found that changes in the compositional make up of a site can result in changes to the spectral response that contradict the trends in vegetative indices and Tasseled Cap transformations. At one particular site, we show that Tasseled Cap indices are all consistent with a statistically significant decline in surface cover while spectral mixture analysis demonstrates statistically significant increases in vegetative cover.
Highlights
Alpine ecosystems are crucial laboratories for the study of how changing climatic variables will impact local species assemblages
In this study we explore ecosystem response to recent climate change by performing a spectral mixture analysis of 16 sample sites which demonstrated similar directional trends in their visible and nearIR spectral response and analyzing trends in sample site composition using time series analysis of Landsat surface reflectance data
Data collection: In order to perform a temporal study comparing the physiological changes over time at each of the sample sites, surface reflectance values for each year of the study period were obtained from the USGS Climate Data Record (CDR) archive
Summary
Alpine ecosystems are crucial laboratories for the study of how changing climatic variables will impact local species assemblages. The biomes that inhabit these areas are susceptible to changing environmental parameters since many exist at the limits of their ranges [1]. While many studies have identified biotic response to climate change over large regions, the response at the local and individual ecosystem level are necessary to understand population dynamics that underlie range shifts [3,4]. Existing research has focused on the response of individual species, often overlooking important biotic and abiotic interactions that drive community assembly. In alpine regions, the loss of space with elevation will lead upslope migrating species into a summit trap which will drive extinction rates higher [5,6]
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