A Look at Amazon Basin Seasonal Dynamics with the Biophysical ...

Scaling of Biophysical Variables of Tropical ForestsJiaguo Qi, Cuizhen Wang, Eraldo Matricardi and David SkoleBasic Science and Remote Sensing Initiative, Department of GeographyMichigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823Email: qi@msu.eduAbstractThe tropical forest ecosystems are being altered by both human-induced and naturaldisturbances. Logging, wildfires and land cover/use conversions are major mechanisms bywhich the ecosystems are being modified, and eventually lead to substantial negativeimpacts on human environment. To better understand these processes and interactionsamong all agents, efforts have been made to observe the dynamics of the tropical forestecosystems via intensive ground experiments and satellite observations. One of the keyissues is to scale up results at plot or local scale to regional scale, i.e., can we extrapolatethe findings at plot scale to understand the regional process? Although there are manyissues to be addressed in order to answer this question, in this study, we analyzed a set ofbiophysical variables derived from remote sensing images at varying spatial scales, rangingfrom 1m (IKONOS), 30m (ETM+), to 250m, 500m, and 1000m (MODIS andVEGETATION) spatial resolutions. We used signal-unmixing and improved classificationtechniques to examine the scaling properties of some of the key biophysical variables suchas cover dynamics that are functionally related to tropical ecosystem interactions withatmosphere and are major manifestations of human disturbances. The local study sites nearRondonia have been selected as starting point and are scaled up to the entire BrazilianAmazon.