Landsat imagery applications to identify vegetation recovery from acidification in mountain catchments

Abstract

In the 1980s, headwater catchments of the Jizera Mountains (Czech Republic) were degradated by the extreme acid atmospheric deposition, die-back of spruce plantations (Picea abies), and commercial forestry practices. The aim of this study is to evaluate long-term changes in the vegetation canopy within two catchments of drinking water reservoirs Josefův Důl and Souš, using the Landsat imagery archive, 1984-2010. The ground-based evidence of canopy characteristics was carried out in the Jizerka experimental basin on plots 30 x 30 m. The supervised classification of multi-band raster images was found effective to describe long-term changes in the canopy of investigated catchments. The NDVI index can well identify succession of herbaceous communities after the clear-cut. However, NDVI values were not sensitive to detect changes in the canopy structure of dense spruce stands where the horizontal canopy density exceeds 30 percent.

Keywords

• forested mountain watershed
• canopy density
• acid atmospheric deposition
• landsat imagery
• normalized difference vegetation index