Functional assessment and remote sensing up-scaling of coastal erosion damages on forest stands

摘要

Simple models relating growth to photosynthetically active solar radiation absorbed by forest canopies are a necessary tool for scaling-up functional parameters to ecosystem scale. The present study examined the effects of coastal erosion and of distance from the seaside on the physiology and growth of 63-year-old Pinus pinea stands. The effects of radiation interception, stomatal limitations and carbon allocation on stand above-ground increments were analyzed. The assessment of the relative importance of each term and the relation between growth and intercepted light by the canopy was the starting point for RS analysis by means of vegetation indices based on TM images, once confounding effects had been eliminated by pairwise analysis. The analysisof reflectance spectra also allowed to quantify the impact of erosion on ecosystem diversity and integrity.