Mapping Forage Biomass and Quality of the Inner Mongolia Grasslands by Combining Field Measurements and Sentinel-2 Observations

Abstract

Grasslands provide essential forage sources for global livestock production. Remote sensing approaches have been widely used to estimate the biomass production of grasslands from regional to global scales, but simultaneously mapping the forage biomass and quality metrics (e.g., crude fiber and crude protein) is still relatively lacking despite an increasing need for better livestock management. We conducted novel gradient grass-cutting experiments and measured hyperspectral reflectance, forage biomass, crude fiber per area (CFarea), and crude protein per area (CParea) across 19 temperate grassland sites in the Xilingol region, Inner Mongolia, China. Based on these measurements, we identified sensitive spectral bands, calculated nine potential spectral indices (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Enhanced Vegetation Index, Red Edge Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Red-Edge Inflection Point, Inverted Red-Edge Chlorophyll Index algorithm, Normalized Difference Red Edge Index, Nitrogen Reflectance Index, Normalized Greenness Index, Land Surface Water Index) and established Random Forest (RF) models that well predicted forage biomass (R2 = 0.67, NRMSE = 12%), CFarea (R2 = 0.59, NRMSE = 14%), and CParea (R2 = 0.77, NRMSE = 10%). Among these nine indices, Land Surface Water Index (LSWI, calculated by R785-900 and R2100-2280) was identified to be the most important predictor and was then used to establish empirical power law models, showing comparable prediction accuracies (forage biomass, R2 = 0.53; NRMSE = 14%; CFarea, R2 = 0.40, NRMSE = 17%; CParea, R2 = 0.72, NRMSE = 11%) in comparison to Random Forest models. Combining the empirical power law models with the LSWI calculated from Sentinel-2 observations, we further mapped the forage biomass and quality and estimated the livestock carrying capacity. The predicted forage biomass, CFarea, and CParea all showed a significant increase with higher mean annual precipitation, but showed no significant correlations with mean annual temperature. Compared with the estimates based on crude protein, the conventional approach solely based on forage biomass consistently overestimated livestock carrying capacity, especially in wetter areas. Our work provides an approach to simultaneously map the forage biomass and quality metrics and recommends a LSWI-based power law model for rapid and low-cost assessment of regional forage status to guide better livestock management.