Assessing Biodiversity from Space: an Example from the Western Ghats, India

By K. Bawa, J. Rose, K. Ganeshaiah, N. Barve, M. C. Kiran, R. Umashaanker. 2002

82 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We demonstrate for the first time the potential use of satellite imagery to characterize areas of high and low species richness of trees in tropical forests. Our studies, conducted in the Biligiri Rangaswamy hills in the Western Ghats, India, show a high positive correlation between species richness and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which is an index of green biomass. We discuss the application of NDVI values for biodiversity assessment and monitoring, as well as for conservation planning. The NDVI is a rough measure of green biomass.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6d7a435942fda02c9bf1469c07a92851f03ef64d

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Citations in the corpus

Livelihood gains and ecological costs of non-timber forest product dependence: assessing the roles of dependence, ecological knowledge and market structure in three contrasting human and ecological settings in south India (2004, background): “1998) and the ecosystem (Uma Shaanker et al. 2001; Bawa et al. 2002), such as in disrupting ecosystem services (for example pollinator services; Ghazoul 2001).”
Linking variability in species composition and MODIS NDVI based on beta diversity measurements (2009, background): “Introduction field or plot data to assess the spatial and temporary changes An important issue in terrestrial vegetation study is to identify the distribution patterns of floristic composition of a given site and to determine the factors controlling the distribution and diversity of species.”
Measuring and modelling biodiversity from space (2008, background): “…correlations between plant species richness or diversity from plot or regions data and NDVI in both temperate (Fairbanks and McGwire, 2004; Levin et al., 2007; Rocchini, 2007a) and tropical ecosystems (Bawa et al., 2002; Gillespie, 2005; Feeley et al., 2005; Cayuela et al., 2006) (Figure 4).”
Habitat suitability modelling to correlate gene flow with landscape connectivity (2008, methodology): “vegetation index (NDVI; Bawa et al. 2002), which averaged the seasonal variation of NDVI in the study area to indicate vegetation growth of each location.”