Land degradation, soil erosion and desertification monitoring in Mediterranean ecosystems

Abstract Under the European Commissions's DG XII “Research & Development Programme in the Field of the Environment” emphasis is given to identify, map and control desertification phenomena in the Mediterranean area. Based upon previous experiences in Mediterranean land cover mapping, the “Environmental Mapping and Modelling Unit” of the Institute for Remote Sensing Applications is actively participating in this programme. A semi‐operational approach to land degradation mapping has recently been developed which requires radiometric rectification of the multi‐spectral images and the availability of spectral libraries. Linear spectral mixture modelling is then used to decompose image spectra into their spectrally distinct components, the fractional abundance of which then provides a largely unbiased measure for direct mapping of vegetation abundance and the identification of soil conditions and erosion hazards. Ground verification in a well‐controlled test site in the south of France proved an excellent accu...

[1]  C. Perry,et al.  Functional equivalence of spectral vegetation indices , 1984 .

[2]  J. Hill,et al.  Imaging spectrometry : a tool for environmental observations , 1994 .

[3]  Milton O. Smith,et al.  Mapping Sparse Vegetation Canopies , 1994 .

[4]  Frédéric Baret,et al.  MODELING CANOPY SPECTRAL PROPERTIES TO RETRIEVE BIOPHYSICAL AND BIOCHEMICAL CHARACTERISTICS. , 1994 .

[5]  D. Roberts,et al.  Green vegetation, nonphotosynthetic vegetation, and soils in AVIRIS data , 1993 .

[6]  J. Clevers.  Application of a weighted infrared-red vegetation index for estimating leaf Area Index by Correcting for Soil Moisture , 1989 .

[7]  J. Hill,et al.  Land Degradation and Soil Erosion Mapping in a Mediterranean Ecosystem , 1994 .

[8]  M. Grenon,et al.  Futures for the Mediterranean basin : the Blue Plan , 1989 .

[9]  John B. Adams,et al.  Quantitative subpixel spectral detection of targets in multispectral images. [terrestrial and planetary surfaces] , 1992 .

[10]  J. C. Price,et al.  Estimating leaf area index from satellite data , 1993, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[11]  A. Huete.  A soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) , 1988 .

[12]  I. L. Thomas,et al.  Classification of remotely sensed images. , 1987 .

[13]  R. Dean Graetz,et al.  Remote Sensing of Terrestrial Ecosystem Structure: An Ecologist’s Pragmatic View , 1990 .

[14]  Alan R. Gillespie,et al.  Vegetation in deserts. I - A regional measure of abundance from multispectral images. II - Environmental influences on regional abundance , 1990 .

[15]  Didier Tanré,et al.  Atmospherically resistant vegetation index (ARVI) for EOS-MODIS , 1992, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[16]  M. Verstraete.  Retrieving Canopy Properties from Remote Sensing Measurements , 1994 .

[17]  B. Pinty,et al.  On the design and validation of surface bidirectional reflectance and albedo models , 1992 .