Spatial pattern dynamics of quasi-circular plant community patches at Gudong oil field

Abstract

Spatial pattern dynamics of plant community is a key indicator of long-term plant change in semi-arid ecosystems. This study uses high spatial resolution SPOT5 remote sensing data to detect the quasi-circular plant community patches to analyze the spatial pattern dynamics at Gudong Oil Field, China. The detection accuracy of quasi-circular plant community patches from SPOT5 is about 84%. Compared with the 2000, the amount of quasi-circular plant community patches increases from 169 to 204 in 2005, but the areas of 169 quasi-circular plant community patches in 2000 changes a little in 2005. Spatial patterns of quasi-circular plant community patches in 2000 and 2005 are analyzed using average nearest neighbor method in ArcGIS, and both of their spatial patterns are dispersed distribution. This is due to seismic exploration at Gudong Oil Field since 1980’s. These results show that high spatial resolution remote sensing data is simple and effective for detecting plant community patch, and easy to be used to study spatial pattern dynamics of plant community.