Gower, Stith (Tom): University of Wisconsin, Madison (Project Lead)
Serbin, Shawn: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Participant)
Project Funding:
2004 - 2007
Funded by NASA
Abstract:
The proposed study builds on Gower’s 10 years of boreal forest carbon research in the BOREAS northern Study Area (NSA) that includes the BOREAS, BigFoot, BEx-FIRE, and BEx-WARM projects Gower is the PI of BEx-FIRE, a NSF Integrated Research Challenges in Environmental Biology grant that examined changes in species composition, structure, and function for a well- and poorly-drained, boreal forest wildfire chronosequences. BEx-FIRE provides all the necessary field measurements of vegetation canopy dynamics, including the labor-intensive site and species-specific allometric equations required to directly estimate leaf area and net primary production. The objective of this study is to use MODIS to quantify three critical vegetation canopy parameters that influence CO2 exchange between boreal forests and the atmosphere, and are strongly affected two dominant aspects of global change of boreal forests: wildfire and climate warming. The three research questions, and their scientific importance, of this study are:
(1) Can MODIS accurately measure (i) early growing season “green-up” or phenology; (ii) inter-annual changes of vegetation composition and LAI of aggrading boreal forest stands following disturbance; and (iii) vegetation composition and LAI of boreal forests of different-aged and contrasting drainage.
(2) Does light use efficiency change during boreal forest succession, and if so, can it be correlated to changes in forest canopy structure, chemistry and pigment content of forest canopies. We will quantify the relationships between changes in overstory and ground cover vegetation composition to changes in chemistry. These data will be used to provide a physiological basis for our hypothesized differences in (i) canopy reflectance and (ii) light use efficiency among the different-aged stands and
(3) Can MODIS reflectance data be used in combination with historic AVHRR data to quantify the contribution of the recent increase of NDVI for boreal regions (Myneni et al. 1997, Tucker et al. 2001) to direct effect of climate warming on early green-up versus effects of increased fire frequency and canopy reflectance.
This research directly addresses NASA’s ESE scientific questions: (1) How do ecosystems respond to and affect global environmental change and the carbon cycle?; and (2) How well can cycling of carbon through the Earth system be modeled? The proposed study will advance Gower’s long-term effort to systematically link field measurements, remote sensing and ecosystem modeling to quantify the effects of global change on the carbon budget of boreal forests.
More details may be found in the following project profile(s):
