Relationships of NDVI, Biomass, and Leaf Area Index (LAI) for six key plant species in Barrow, Alaska

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1 Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA
2 Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA
3 Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada
4 Environmental Science and Engineering Program, University of Teas at El Paso, El Paso, USA
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.913v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Biodiversity, Biogeography, Ecology, Ecosystem Science, Environmental Sciences
Keywords
NDVI, Biomass, Arctic, NDVI, LAI, Tundra, Barrow, Alaska, Plant Functional Type
Copyright
© 2015 Goswami et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Goswami S, Gamon J, Vargas S, Tweedie C. 2015. Relationships of NDVI, Biomass, and Leaf Area Index (LAI) for six key plant species in Barrow, Alaska. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e913v1

Abstract

Here we investigate relationships between NDVI, Biomass, and Leaf Area Index (LAI) for six key plant species near Barrow, Alaska. We explore how key plant species differ in biomass, leaf area index (LAI) and how can vegetation spectral indices be used to estimate biomass and LAI for key plant species. A vegetation index (VI) or a spectral vegetation index (SVI) is a quantitative predictor of plant biomass or vegetative vigor, usually formed from combinations of several spectral bands, whose values are added, divided, or multiplied in order to yield a single value that indicates the amount or vigor of vegetation. For six key plant species, NDVI was strongly correlated with biomass (R2 = 0.83) and LAI (R2 = 0.70) but showed evidence of saturation above a biomass of 100 g/m2 and an LAI of 2 m2/m2. Extrapolation of a biomass-plant cover model to a multi-decadal time series of plant cover observations suggested that Carex aquatilis and Eriophorum angustifolium decreased in biomass while Arctophila fulva and Dupontia fisheri increased 1972-2008.

Author Comment

This is a preprint of a manuscript currently under review in a journal.