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Monitoring soil moisture with SAR for assessment of peatland vulnerability to wildfire
Laura
Louise
Bourgeau-Chavez, Michigan Tech Research Institute, laura.chavez@mtu.edu
(Presenter)
With climate change, northern latitudes are experiencing changes in the timing, duration and extremes of precipitation and temperature. The vulnerability of peatlands to wildfire depends on the fuel moisture conditions of the organic peat which have an average depth in boreal and subarctic systems of 2.5 meters. The ability to remotely map and monitor peatlands over time with reference to moisture conditions allows for spatially explicit assessments of trends in moisture patterns. Sites were set up in boreal Alberta Canada, Alaska and Michigan's upper peninsula for development of algorithms for monitoring ground fuel moisture with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite imagery. Data were collected in the summers of 2010 and 2011 over forested bogs and open and treed fens as well as other lowland ecosystems. Evaluations of the datsets by ecosystem type, with and without ancillary information on aboveground biomass, are evaluated. Vegetation biomass is the primary confounding factor in estimating soil moisture condition from SAR imagery and information on biomass has been found to improve moisture predicition algorithms. Presentation: 2011_Poster_BourgeauChavez_116_302.pdf (4169k) Presentation Type: Poster Session: Global Change Impact & Vulnerability (Tue 11:30 AM) Associated Project(s):
Poster Location ID: 116
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