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Acta Prataculturae Sinica ›› 2023, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (10): 1-14.DOI: 10.11686/cyxb2022488

   

An evaluation of a remote sensing method based on optimized triangular vegetation index (TVI) for aboveground shrub biomass estimation in shrub-encroached grassland

Zheng-yong XU1(), Bin SUN2,3(), Wang-fei ZHANG1, Yi-fu LI2,3, Zi-yu YAN2,3, Wei YUE2,3, Si-han TENG2,3,4   

  1. 1.College of Forestry,Southwest Forestry University,Kunming 650224,China
    2.Research Institute of Forest Resource Information Techniques,Chinese Academy of Forestry,Beijing 100091,China
    3.Laboratory of Forestry Remote Sensing and Information System,National Forestry and Grassland Administration,Beijing 100091,China
    4.Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Big Data Center,Hohhot 010000,China
  • Received:2022-12-13 Revised:2023-01-16 Online:2023-10-20 Published:2023-07-26
  • Contact: Bin SUN

Abstract:

Shrub-encroachment onto grassland is becoming an important ecological problem in grassland ecosystems, and accurate estimation of the shrub above-ground biomass (AGB) in shrub-encroached grassland vegetation plays a significant role in research into regional ecosystem carbon cycles. Due to the dual effects of soil background noise and differences in vegetation growth structure characteristics, the traditional vegetation indices are extremely unstable for model-building involving shrub-encroached grassland AGB estimation. To solve this problem, in this study we developed a novel way by optimizing the triangular vegetation index (TVI) using Sentinel-2 remote sensing data for shrub-encroached grassland AGB estimation. The results showed that: 1) In the area dominated by herbaceous vegetation, TVI calculated using a combination of green, red-edge and near-infrared (R560R705 and R865) performed best with an R2 of 0.684; in the area dominated by shrub vegetation, the TVI again performed best with R2= 0.368. 2) When analyzing the sensitivity of the 12 commonly used vegetation indexes to soil noise, the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) was the most sensitive to soil noise in the area dominated by herbaceous vegetation; in the area dominated by shrub vegetation, the modified soil adjusted vegetation index (MSAVI) was the most sensitive. 3) In the area dominated by herbaceous vegetation, the optimized vegetation index grassland triangular vegetation index (GTVI) performed better than TVI with the value of RCV2 (coefficient of determination cross validation) increased by 0.153 and the value of RMSECV decreased by 12.222 g·m-2; in the area dominated by shrub vegetation, GTVI performed better than TVI and the RCV2 value increased 0.029, while the RMSECV (root mean square error cross validation) decreased 1.684 g·m-2. 4) The estimation results acquired by GTVI showed the highest accuracy when compared with the results estimated by the commonly used 12 vegetation indices. The results of this study are expected to provide a scientific basis and reference AGB estimation in shrub-encroached grassland using vegetation indices extracted from remote sensing data.

Key words: shrub-encroached grassland, aboveground biomass of vegetation, vegetation index method, optimize triangular vegetation index