Exploring the Use of Sentinel-2 Data to Monitor Heterogeneous Effects of Contextual Drought and Heatwaves on Mediterranean Forests | Land Portal

Resource information

Date of publication: 
September 2020
Resource Language: 
ISBN / Resource ID: 
10.3390/land9090325
License of the resource: 
Copyright details: 
© 2020 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article.

The use of satellite data to detect forest areas impacted by extreme events, such as droughts, heatwaves, or fires is largely documented, however, the use of these data to identify the heterogeneity of the forests’ response to determine fine scale spatially irregular damage is less explored. This paper evaluates the health status of forests in southern Italy affected by adverse climate conditions during the hot and dry summer of 2017, using Sentinel-2 images (10m) and in situ data. Our analysis shows that the post-event—NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) decrease, observed in five experimental sites, well accounts for the heterogeneity of the local response to the climate event evaluated in situ through the Mannerucci and the Raunkiaer methods. As a result, Sentinel-2 data can be effectively integrated with biological information from field surveys to introduce continuity in the estimation of climate change impacts even in very heterogeneous areas whose details could not be captured by lower resolution observations. This integration appears to be a successful strategy in the study of the relationships between the climate and forests from a dynamical perspective.

Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

Coluzzi, Rosa
Fascetti, Simonetta
Imbrenda, Vito
Italiano, Santain S.
Ripullone, Francesco
Lanfredi, Maria

Publisher(s): 

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