Radar vision in the mapping of forest biodiversity from space

Soyeon Bae (), Shaun R. Levick, Lea Heidrich, Paul Magdon, Benjamin F. Leutner, Stephan Wöllauer, Alla Serebryanyk, Thomas Nauss, Peter Krzystek, Martin M. Gossner, Peter Schall, Christoph Heibl, Claus Bässler, Inken Doerfler, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Franz-Sebastian Krah, Heike Culmsee, Kirsten Jung, Marco Heurich, Markus Fischer, Sebastian Seibold, Simon Thorn, Tobias Gerlach, Torsten Hothorn, Wolfgang W. Weisser and Jörg Müller
Additional contact information
Soyeon Bae: University of Würzburg
Shaun R. Levick: CSIRO Land and Water, PMB 44
Lea Heidrich: University of Würzburg
Paul Magdon: University of Göttingen
Benjamin F. Leutner: German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Stephan Wöllauer: Philipps-University Marburg
Alla Serebryanyk: Munich University of Applied Sciences
Thomas Nauss: Philipps-University Marburg
Peter Krzystek: Munich University of Applied Sciences
Martin M. Gossner: Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL
Peter Schall: University of Göttingen
Christoph Heibl: Bavarian Forest National Park
Claus Bässler: Bavarian Forest National Park
Inken Doerfler: Technical University of Munich
Ernst-Detlef Schulze: Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
Franz-Sebastian Krah: Bavarian Forest National Park
Heike Culmsee: German Federal Foundation for the Environment
Kirsten Jung: University Ulm
Marco Heurich: Bavarian Forest National Park
Markus Fischer: University of Bern
Sebastian Seibold: University of Würzburg
Simon Thorn: University of Würzburg
Tobias Gerlach: UNESCO-Biosphere Reserve Rhön
Torsten Hothorn: University of Zurich
Wolfgang W. Weisser: Technical University of Munich
Jörg Müller: University of Würzburg

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Recent progress in remote sensing provides much-needed, large-scale spatio-temporal information on habitat structures important for biodiversity conservation. Here we examine the potential of a newly launched satellite-borne radar system (Sentinel-1) to map the biodiversity of twelve taxa across five temperate forest regions in central Europe. We show that the sensitivity of radar to habitat structure is similar to that of airborne laser scanning (ALS), the current gold standard in the measurement of forest structure. Our models of different facets of biodiversity reveal that radar performs as well as ALS; median R² over twelve taxa by ALS and radar are 0.51 and 0.57 respectively for the first non-metric multidimensional scaling axes representing assemblage composition. We further demonstrate the promising predictive ability of radar-derived data with external validation based on the species composition of birds and saproxylic beetles. Establishing new area-wide biodiversity monitoring by remote sensing will require the coupling of radar data to stratified and standardized collected local species data.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12737-x

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