Abstract
One of the main initiatives for China to achieve the goal of being carbon neutral before 2060 is transforming monocultures into mixed plantations in subtropical China, because mixed forests possess a higher quality than monocultures in various ways. Very high spatial resolution (VHR) satellite imagery is very promising to precisely monitor the transformation process under the premise of clarifying the canopy reflectance anisotropy of mixed plantations. However, it is almost impossible to understand the canopy reflectance anisotropy of mixed plantations with real satellite data due to the extreme lack of multiangular VHR satellite images. In this study, the effects of the mixture mode on the canopy bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) were comprehensively analyzed with simulated VHR images. The three-dimensional (3D) Discrete Anisotropic Radiative Transfer model (DART) was used to construct a pure coniferous scene, a pure broadleaved scene, and 27 coniferous–broadleaved mixed plantation scenes containing 3 mixture patterns (i.e., mixed by single trees, mixed by stripes, and mixed by patches) and 9 mixing proportions (i.e., from 10% to 90% with the interval of 10%), and to simulate red (R) and near-infrared (NIR) VHR images for these 3D scenes at both the solar principal plane (SPP) and perpendicular plane (PP) under different solar-viewing geometries. Negative correlations were generally found between the canopy BRF and the ratio of conifers in a mixed stand. The anisotropy of conifer dominated plantations is more prominent than broadleaf dominated plantations, especially for the single tree mixture. Although the level of anisotropy is much lower for PP than SPP, it should not be ignored, especially for the R band. Observations under large viewing zenith angles at PP are more preferred to study the effect of mixing proportions, followed by forward observations at SPP. The R band image has higher potential to distinguish mixture patterns for broadleaf-dominated situations, while the NIR band image has a higher potential for conifer-dominated situations. Furthermore, the canopy BRF generally increases with the solar zenith angle, and one meter can be considered as the optimal spatial resolution for the optical monitoring of the mixture mode. The findings of the current study add some valuable theoretical knowledge for the accurate monitoring of coniferous–broadleaved mixed plantations with VHR imagery.
Highlights
IntroductionThe majority of plantations in subtropical China are coniferous monocultures, which was considered as one of the main causes for the low quality of China’s plantations with weak ecosystem stability as well as low stock volume [3,4]
Pure and mixed plantation scenes were constructed, eters of Discrete Anisotropic Radiative Transfer model (DART) modeland were configured according to the empirical values measured from both the red (R) and NIR Very high spatial resolution (VHR) images of these forest scenes were simulated at the field investigations andprincipal simulated the 3‐PGmix model
This suggests that the hotspot area is relatively more appropriate to monitor the variation caused by mixture modes than the other viewing directions at solar principal plane (SPP) for the R band rather than the NIR band
Summary
The majority of plantations in subtropical China are coniferous monocultures, which was considered as one of the main causes for the low quality of China’s plantations with weak ecosystem stability as well as low stock volume [3,4]. Sufficient water and heat resources in subtropical China are favorable natural conditions for evergreen broadleaved tree species, which have been harvested and replaced by fast-growing high-yield coniferous monocultures since the 1950s [5,6]. In order to solve this problem, the Chinese government has strongly campaigned for the forest quality improvement initiative since 2016, in which transforming the even-aged coniferous monocultures into coniferous–broadleaved mixed plantations is one of the preferred silvicultural solutions [2]
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