Abstract
Recent progress in remote sensing provides much-needed, large-scale spatio-temporal information on habitat structures important for biodiversity conservation. Here we examine the potential of a newly launched satellite-borne radar system (Sentinel-1) to map the biodiversity of twelve taxa across five temperate forest regions in central Europe. We show that the sensitivity of radar to habitat structure is similar to that of airborne laser scanning (ALS), the current gold standard in the measurement of forest structure. Our models of different facets of biodiversity reveal that radar performs as well as ALS; median R² over twelve taxa by ALS and radar are 0.51 and 0.57 respectively for the first non-metric multidimensional scaling axes representing assemblage composition. We further demonstrate the promising predictive ability of radar-derived data with external validation based on the species composition of birds and saproxylic beetles. Establishing new area-wide biodiversity monitoring by remote sensing will require the coupling of radar data to stratified and standardized collected local species data.
Highlights
Recent progress in remote sensing provides much-needed, large-scale spatio-temporal information on habitat structures important for biodiversity conservation
Large-area mapping by space-borne laser scanning has far been limited in scope, progress towards this long-term goal is being made by programmes such as Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigator (GEDI)[12] and ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2)[13], in which spot measurements of canopy height and profile layering are obtained within the laser beam footprint (~22 and 90 m, respectively)
Canonical correlation analysis (CCoA) showed a strong correlation between the habitat metrics derived from the airborne laser scanning (ALS) and radar sensors
Summary
Recent progress in remote sensing provides much-needed, large-scale spatio-temporal information on habitat structures important for biodiversity conservation. Large-area mapping by space-borne laser scanning has far been limited in scope, progress towards this long-term goal is being made by programmes such as Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigator (GEDI)[12] and ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2)[13], in which spot measurements of canopy height and profile layering are obtained within the laser beam footprint (~22 and 90 m, respectively) Both missions are expected to supply critical information in support of the mapping of structural essential biodiversity variables. We quantify the predictive power of radar in modelling different aspects of biodiversity, including species composition and richness and phylogenetic diversity, and compare the results to those obtained using very high density (8–40 pulses/m2 in this study) ALS data For this purpose, we make use of a distributed groundbased network of 463 biodiversity monitoring plots spanning five Central European temperate forest regions and capturing biodiversity data for 12 functional groups. To test their suitability for biodiversity mapping and monitoring, the radar models for two taxa are validated using independent external data collected from areas outside the five training areas
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