Elsevier

Ecological Informatics

Volume 25, January 2015, Pages 29-34
Ecological Informatics

Testing the spectral diversity hypothesis using spectroscopy data in a simulated wetland community

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.10.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • New collection of spectra for prairie-fen species

  • First test of spectral diversity hypothesis for wetland species using hyperspectral data

  • Spectral diversity can predict species diversity quantified using Shannon's diversity index with normalized RMSE < 0.4.

Abstract

The spectral diversity hypothesis proposes that as the number of plant species increases for a given area, the diversity of spectra observed from that area should also increase. This approach could be very useful as an assessment and monitoring tool to help ecologists understand the spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity without relying on consistently detecting individual species. While the spectral diversity hypothesis has been examined for a wide range of ecosystems using a variety of remote sensing data, it has not been tested using spectroscopy (i.e. hyperspectral) data for wetlands. Previous studies have not explicitly considered the impact that flowers may have on spectral diversity and how this may impact the spectral diversity hypothesis. To test the spectral diversity hypothesis and the potential impact on flowers, we used a simulation approach to combine leaf and flower spectra collected from a diverse prairie fen wetland ecosystem into datasets of virtual plots with varying levels of species diversity and different combination of species. To address the high dimensionality of the data, we compared spectral diversity and floristic diversity using partial least squares regression. Our results found that defining floristic diversity using the Shannon's diversity index, which accounts for plant abundance in each plot, produced the best predictive models where the predicted values had a RMSE less than 40% of the mean observed value. We also found that the inclusion of flower spectra with leaf spectra did increase the RMSE of the best model, but across all models, correlation increased. Our results indicate that spectral diversity could be used as an initial biodiversity assessment tool for wetlands, especially with on-going advancements in unmanned aerial vehicle technology that can provide a low altitude platform for imaging spectroscopy.

Introduction

The assessment of biodiversity often relies on time-consuming fieldwork with very limited spatial extent. Remote sensing can provide consistent, repeatable, and spatially continuous measurements of the landscape. Remote sensing can be an important tool that compliments field-based approaches to aid in the assessment, monitoring, and ultimately the conservation of biodiversity (Gillespie et al., 2008, Gould, 2000, Kerr and Ostrovsky, 2003, Nagendra and Gadgil, 1999). For example, remote sensing can be used as a low-cost method of initial assessment of biodiversity patterns (Gillespie, 2005, Rocchini et al., 2010a, Rocchini et al., 2010b) and used to inform future plant species inventory activities (Rocchini et al., 2005).

There are two approaches to the remote sensing of biodiversity (see Gillespie et al., 2008 for a more detailed review). One approach is the use of remote sensing data to directly detect and map individual species (e.g. Becker et al., 2007, Clark et al., 2005, Feret and Asner, 2013, Martin et al., 1998). While this approach can be extremely useful, especially for the detection or monitoring of rare or invasive species, the ability to detect individual species can vary with environmental context (e.g. Andrew and Ustin, 2008) and can require detailed and extensive data for ground truthing.

An alternative approach is to relate the variability or diversity in spectra with the level of biodiversity for a given location (Nagendra, 2001). Variations between species in pigments, tissues, and structural components have been shown to be the mechanisms that link spectral diversity with species diversity (Asner et al., 2009, Asner et al., 2012, Carlson et al., 2007, White et al., 2010). While several papers have examined the relationship between spectral diversity and species diversity, there is a lack of a consistent terminology for this relationship. We are defining the concept that spectral diversity and species diversity are positively related via diversity in plant physiology as the “spectral diversity hypothesis.” This is similar to the spectral variation hypothesis proposed by Palmer et al. (2002), except that the spectral diversity hypothesis explicitly links the diversity of spectral measurement with levels of diversity, independent of sampling area.

Most previous remote sensing studies have focused on α diversity, the biodiversity within a given habitat or location. Data used have ranged moderate resolution multi-spectral Landsat (Gillespie, 2005, Hernandez-Stefanoni et al., 2012) to very high resolution multispectral Quickbird (Hall et al., 2012, Rocchini et al., 2007) to satellite and airborne hyperspectral (Carlson et al., 2007, Carter et al., 2005, White et al., 2010). Most papers have focused on tropical forests (Carlson et al., 2007, Gillespie, 2005) and temperate grasslands, although other ecosystems such as temperate wetlands, temperate forests, and fire recovery in Mediterranean ecosystems have also been studied. The reported percent of alpha diversity explained by spectral diversity has varied greatly between studies from as high as 85% (Carlson et al., 2007) to as low as 36% (Hall et al., 2012). Fewer studies have examined the application of remote sensing to β diversity, the difference in species occurrence or relative abundance between locations. Hall et al. (2012) reported that 33% species turnover could be explained from Quickbird spectral data. Using hyperspectral imagery, Baldeck and Asner (2013) were able to explain 25% of β diversity comparing unsupervised spectral clusters with Bray–Curtis dissimilarity. The methodologies used have also varied widely in terms of the definition of biodiversity, image processing techniques, and statistical methods used. Due to the small number of studies and wide variety of sensor, ecosystems, and methods, there is no clear consensus about the best approach to link spectral and biodiversity.

This research examines the spectral diversity hypothesis in a wetland using hyperspectral data. We conducted two sets of experiments to test the following questions: 1) Is there a significant positive relationship between floristic α diversity and spectral diversity using spectra from prairie fen vegetation? 2) Does defining species diversity using an abundance-based diversity index produce a better stronger relationship than species richness? 3) Do plots that contain both flower and leaf spectra produce models with more error than plots with just leaf spectra? To our knowledge, this is the first paper to use hyperspectral data to test the spectral diversity hypothesis for a wetland ecosystem and to explicitly consider the effect flower spectra on the spectral diversity hypothesis.

To test our hypotheses, we collected spectra from the leaves and flowers of 34 prairie fen wetland species and used a simulation approach to create 1000 virtual plots using different combinations of species and spectra. Our rationale for this approach is largely practical. The remote sensing of prairie fen vegetation will require ultra-high spatial resolution imagery (~ 10 cm pixels), which will require image acquisition at low altitudes using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). This technology is still being developed and tested, but will serve as a vital source of ultra-high spatial resolution imagery in the near future (Lucieer et al., 2014). Similar to Baldeck and Asner (2013), we used a simulation approach to demonstrate the methodology to test the spectral diversity hypothesis prior to implementation. This paper also presents a new collection of spectra for prairie-fen species.

Section snippets

Study area

The study was conducted in the Braeburn Marsh wetland complex located within the Ann Arbor Moraine ecoregion in southeast Michigan (~ 42° 16′ N, ~ 84° 4′ W). The wetland complex contains several plant communities including meadow, wet prairie, prairie fen, and marsh. They are sedge-dominated, groundwater-fed wetlands found in the glaciated upper Midwest of North America. High calcium and magnesium and low nitrogen and phosphorus levels combined with the presence of prairie species, make these

Results

Table 2 lists the correlation (r), RMSE, and nRMSE between the observed and predicted diversity for the training and validation datasets. Note that all models had a p-value of less than 0.0001 indicating a strong significance. Fig. 2 illustrates the observed species diversity compared to the predicted species diversity for the validation datasets. Overall, it was found that the models based on only the leaf spectra demonstrated similar performance to the models with both leaf and flower spectra

Discussion and conclusions

Our results found a significant relationship between spectral diversity, calculated as the quartile coefficient of dispersion, and floristic α diversity, calculated as species richness, Shannon's diversity index, and Simpson's diversity index. These results provide further evidence of the spectral diversity hypothesis and the potential to use spectral diversity as an indicator of floristic diversity. The ability to predict levels of floristic diversity prior to time-consuming botanical surveys

Acknowledgments

This research was funded in part by a Faculty Research and Creative Endeavors Grant from the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at Central Michigan University. Special thanks to Sam Lipscomb and Matt Heumann for their assistance in data collection. This is publication #50 of the Central Michigan University Institute of Great Lake Research.

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