Remote Sensing for the Characterization of Covers and Meteorological Conditions of the Chimborazo Fauna Production Reserve

Abstract

Abstract The objective of this research is to characterize the vegetation cover and meteorological conditions through a multispectral analysis of the Chimborazo Wildlife Production Reserve. The methodology used for this research is the one proposed by Chuvieco, which began with the definition of objectives, bibliographic review of the reserve's canopy, download of the most appropriate satellite image (without cloud cover), definition of canopy categories, image correction, calculation of spectral indices, supervised classification, adjustments, map generation using GIS tools, and interpretation of the results. Additionally, a National Solar Radiation Database web platform was used to download meteorological data for the year 2020, which were used to characterize the study area; the results were compared with the data acquired in 2017 with a station installed in the reserve. In the end, it was determined that multispectral analysis allows generating data close to a field work study. For the faunal reserve, the following area of established covers were obtained: shrub vegetation 55.8 km2, snow 47.9 km2, eroded zone 125 km2, moor 190 km2, pasture 76 km2 and crops 30.56 km2. Average temperature 5 ∘ C, relative humidity 95.8% and water precipitation 1.37.

Keywords

• remote sensing, vegetation cover characterization, chimborazo wildlife reserve, meteorological data, multispectral analysis, vegetation index.