Abstract
Dynamic monitoring of plant cover and soil erosion often uses remote sensing data, especially for estimating the plant cover rate (vegetation coverage) by vegetation index. However, the latter is influenced by atmospheric effects and methods for correcting them are still imperfect and disputed. This research supposed and practiced an indirect, fast, and operational method to conduct atmospheric correction of images for getting comparable vegetation index values in different times. It tries to find a variable free from atmospheric effects, e.g., the mean vegetation coverage value of the whole study area, as a basis to reduce atmospheric correction parameters by establishing mathematical models and conducting simulation calculations. Using these parameters, the images can be atmospherically corrected. And then, the vegetation index and corresponding vegetation coverage values for all pixels, the vegetation coverage maps and coverage grade maps for different years were calculated, i.e., the plant cover monitoring was realized. Using the vegetation coverage grade maps and the ground slope grade map from a DEM to generate soil erosion grade maps for different years, the soil erosion monitoring was also realized. The results show that in the study area the vegetation coverage was the lowest in 1976, much better in 1989, but a bit worse again in 2001. Towards the soil erosion, it had been mitigated continuously from 1976 to 1989 and then to 2001. It is interesting that a little decrease of vegetation coverage from 1989 to 2001 did not lead to increase of soil erosion. The reason is that the decrease of vegetation coverage was chiefly caused by urbanization and thus mainly occurred in very gentle terrains, where soil erosion was naturally slight. The results clearly indicate the details of plant cover and soil erosion change in 25 years and also offer a scientific foundation for plant and soil conservation.
Highlights
Dynamic monitoring of plant cover and soil erosion is very important for land use research and environment management
The results clearly indicate the details of plant cover and soil erosion change in 25 years and offer a scientific foundation for plant and soil conservation
Gaffer et al [17] indicated that a geographical information system software package and a modified Universal Soil Loss Equation were used to estimate erosion potential
Summary
Dynamic monitoring of plant cover and soil erosion is very important for land use research and environment management. Plant cover monitoring has been conducted by using field observation, remote sensing, mathematic modeling, simulation, GIS, and GPS techniques [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Remote sensing techniques usually comprise visual airphoto or satellite image interpretation and digital image classification [8,9]. For soil erosion monitoring as an application of vegetation monitoring, GIS techniques and Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) with its various versions are often used too [16,17]. Gaffer et al [17] indicated that a geographical information system software package and a modified Universal Soil Loss Equation were used to estimate erosion potential. Winchell et al [18] stated that the GIS-based approach was shown to produce statistical distributions of the revised USLE length-slope
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