Mustard John F.

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Mustard
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John F.
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The Amazon frontier of land-use change : croplands and consequences for greenhouse gas emissions

2010-10-28 , Galford, Gillian L. , Melillo, Jerry M. , Mustard, John F. , Cerri, Carlos E. P. , Cerri, Carlos C.

The Brazilian Amazon is one of the most rapidly developing agricultural frontiers in the world. The authors assess changes in cropland area and the intensification of cropping in the Brazilian agricultural frontier state of Mato Grosso using remote sensing and develop a greenhouse gas emissions budget. The most common type of intensification in this region is a shift from single- to double-cropping patterns and associated changes in management, including increased fertilization. Using the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor, the authors created a green-leaf phenology for 2001–06 that was temporally smoothed with a wavelet filter. The wavelet-smoothed green-leaf phenology was analyzed to detect cropland areas and their cropping patterns. The authors document cropland extensification and double-cropping intensification validated with field data with 85% accuracy for detecting croplands and 64% and 89% accuracy for detecting single- and double-cropping patterns, respectively. The results show that croplands more than doubled from 2001 to 2006 to cover about 100 000 km2 and that new double-cropping intensification occurred on over 20% of croplands. Variations are seen in the annual rates of extensification and double-cropping intensification. Greenhouse gas emissions are estimated for the period 2001–06 due to conversion of natural vegetation and pastures to row-crop agriculture in Mato Grosso averaged 179 Tg CO2-e yr−1, over half the typical fossil fuel emissions for the country in recent years.

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Article

Regional-scale phenology modeling based on meteorological records and remote sensing observations

2012-09-14 , Yang, Xi , Mustard, John F. , Tang, Jianwu , Hong, Xu

Changes of vegetation phenology in response to climate change in the temperate forests have been well documented recently and have important implications on the regional and global carbon and water cycles. Predicting the impact of changing phenology on terrestrial ecosystems requires an accurate phenology model. Although species-level phenology models have been tested using a small number of vegetation species, they are rarely examined at the regional level. In this study, we used remotely sensed phenology and meteorological data to parameterize the species-level phenology models. We used a remotely sensed vegetation index (Two-band Enhanced Vegetation Index, EVI2) derived from the Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 8-day reflectance product from 2000 to 2010 of New England, United States to calculate remotely sensed vegetation phenology (start/end of season, or SOS/EOS). The SOS/EOS and the daily mean air temperature data from weather stations were used to parameterize three budburst models and one senescence model. We compared the relative strengths of the models to predict vegetation phenology and selected the best model to reconstruct the “landscape phenology” in New England from year 1960 to 2010. Of the three budburst models tested, the spring warming model showed the best performance with an averaged Root Mean Square Deviation (RMSD) of 4.59 days. The Akaike Information Criterion supported the spring warming model in all the weather stations. For senescence modeling, the Delpierre model was better than a null model (the averaged phenology of each weather station, averaged model efficiency = 0.33) and has a RMSD of 8.05 days. A retrospective analysis using the spring warming model suggests a statistically significant advance of SOS in New England from 1960 to 2010 averaged as 0.143 days per year (p = 0.015). EOS calculated using the Delpierre model and growing season length showed no statistically significant advance or delay between 1960 and 2010 in this region. These results suggest the applicability of species-level phenology models at the regional level (and potentially terrestrial biosphere models) and the feasibility of using these models in reconstructing and predicting vegetation phenology.

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Article

Beyond leaf color : comparing camera-based phenological metrics with leaf biochemical, biophysical, and spectral properties throughout the growing season of a temperate deciduous forest

2014-03-31 , Yang, Xi , Tang, Jianwu , Mustard, John F.

Plant phenology, a sensitive indicator of climate change, influences vegetation-atmosphere interactions by changing the carbon and water cycles from local to global scales. Camera-based phenological observations of the color changes of the vegetation canopy throughout the growing season have become popular in recent years. However, the linkages between camera phenological metrics and leaf biochemical, biophysical, and spectral properties are elusive. We measured key leaf properties including chlorophyll concentration and leaf reflectance on a weekly basis from June to November 2011 in a white oak forest on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA. Concurrently, we used a digital camera to automatically acquire daily pictures of the tree canopies. We found that there was a mismatch between the camera-based phenological metric for the canopy greenness (green chromatic coordinate, gcc) and the total chlorophyll and carotenoids concentration and leaf mass per area during late spring/early summer. The seasonal peak of gcc is approximately 20 days earlier than the peak of the total chlorophyll concentration. During the fall, both canopy and leaf redness were significantly correlated with the vegetation index for anthocyanin concentration, opening a new window to quantify vegetation senescence remotely. Satellite- and camera-based vegetation indices agreed well, suggesting that camera-based observations can be used as the ground validation for satellites. Using the high-temporal resolution dataset of leaf biochemical, biophysical, and spectral properties, our results show the strengths and potential uncertainties to use canopy color as the proxy of ecosystem functioning.

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Article

Going beyond the green : senesced vegetation material predicts basal area and biomass in remote sensing of tree cover conditions in an African tropical dry forest (miombo woodland) landscape

2017-08-08 , Mayes, Marc , Mustard, John F. , Melillo, Jerry M. , Neill, Christopher , Nyadzi, Gerson

In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), tropical dry forests and savannas cover over 2.5 million km2 and support livelihoods for millions in fast-growing nations. Intensifying land use pressures have driven rapid changes in tree cover structure (basal area, biomass) that remain poorly characterized at regional scales. Here, we posed the hypothesis that tree cover structure related strongly to senesced and non-photosynthetic (NPV) vegetation features in a SSA tropical dry forest landscape, offering improved means for satellite remote sensing of tree cover structure compared to vegetation greenness-based methods. Across regrowth miombo woodland sites in Tanzania, we analyzed relationships among field data on tree structure, land cover, and satellite indices of green and NPV features based on spectral mixture analyses and normalized difference vegetation index calculated from Landsat 8 data. From satellite-field data relationships, we mapped regional basal area and biomass using NPV and greenness-based metrics, and compared map performances at landscape scales. Total canopy cover related significantly to stem basal area (r 2 = 0.815, p < 0.01) and biomass (r 2 = 0.635, p < 0.01), and NPV dominated ground cover (> 60%) at all sites. From these two conditions emerged a key inverse relationship: skyward exposure of NPV ground cover was high at sites with low tree basal area and biomass, and decreased with increasing stem basal area and biomass. This pattern scaled to Landsat NPV metrics, which showed strong inverse correlations to basal area (Pearson r = −0.85, p < 0.01) and biomass (r = −0.86, p < 0.01). Biomass estimates from Landsat NPV-based maps matched field data, and significantly differentiated landscape gradients in woody biomass that greenness metrics failed to track. The results suggest senesced vegetation metrics at Landsat scales are a promising means for improved monitoring of tree structure across disturbance and ecological gradients in African and other tropical dry forests.

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Article

Historical carbon emissions and uptake from the agricultural frontier of the Brazilian Amazon

2011-04 , Galford, Gillian L. , Melillo, Jerry M. , Kicklighter, David W. , Mustard, John F. , Cronin, Timothy W. , Cerri, Carlos E. P. , Cerri, Carlos C.

Tropical ecosystems play a large and complex role in the global carbon cycle. Clearing of natural ecosystems for agriculture leads to large pulses of CO2 to the atmosphere from terrestrial biomass. Concurrently, the remaining intact ecosystems, especially tropical forests, may be sequestering a large amount of carbon from the atmosphere in response to global environmental changes including climate changes and an increase in atmospheric CO2. Here we use an approach that integrates census-based historical land use reconstructions, remote-sensing-based contemporary land use change analyses, and simulation modeling of terrestrial biogeochemistry to estimate the net carbon balance over the period 1901–2006 for the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, which is one of the most rapidly changing agricultural frontiers in the world. By the end of this period, we estimate that of the state's 925 225 km2, 221 092 km2 have been converted to pastures and 89 533 km2 have been converted to croplands, with forest-to-pasture conversions being the dominant land use trajectory but with recent transitions to croplands increasing rapidly in the last decade. These conversions have led to a cumulative release of 4.8 Pg C to the atmosphere, with 80% from forest clearing and 20% from the clearing of cerrado. Over the same period, we estimate that the residual undisturbed ecosystems accumulated 0.3 Pg C in response to CO2 fertilization. Therefore, the net emissions of carbon from Mato Grosso over this period were 4.5 Pg C. Net carbon emissions from Mato Grosso since 2000 averaged 146 Tg C/yr, on the order of Brazil's fossil fuel emissions during this period. These emissions were associated with the expansion of croplands to grow soybeans. While alternative management regimes in croplands, including tillage, fertilization, and cropping patterns promote carbon storage in ecosystems, they remain a small portion of the net carbon balance for the region. This detailed accounting of a region's carbon balance is the type of foundation analysis needed by the new United Nations Collaborative Programmme for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).

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Preprint

Seasonal variability of multiple leaf traits captured by leaf spectroscopy at two temperate deciduous forests

2015-08 , Yang, Xi , Tang, Jianwu , Mustard, John F. , Wu, Jin , Zhao, Kaiguang , Serbin, Shawn , Lee, Jung-Eun

Understanding the temporal patterns of leaf traits is critical in determining the seasonality and magnitude of terrestrial carbon and water fluxes. However, robust and efficient ways to monitor the temporal dynamics of leaf traits are lacking. Here we assessed the potential of using leaf spectroscopy to predict leaf traits across their entire life cycle, forest sites, and light environments (sunlit vs. shaded) using a weekly sampled dataset across the entire growing season at two temperate deciduous forests. The dataset includes field measured leaf-level directional-hemispherical reflectance/transmittance together with seven important leaf traits [total chlorophyll (chlorophyll a and b), carotenoids, mass-based nitrogen concentration (Nmass), mass-based carbon concentration (Cmass), and leaf mass per area (LMA)]. All leaf properties, including leaf traits and spectra, varied significantly throughout the growing season, and displayed trait-specific temporal patterns. We used a Partial Least Square Regression (PLSR) analysis to estimate leaf traits from spectra, and found a significant capability of PLSR to capture the variability across time, sites, and light environment of all leaf traits investigated (R2=0.6~0.8 for temporal variability; R2=0.3~0.7 for cross-site variability; R2=0.4~0.8 for variability from light environments). We also tested alternative field sampling designs and found that for most leaf traits, biweekly leaf sampling throughout the growing season enabled accurate characterization of the leaf trait seasonal patterns. Increasing the sampling frequency improved in the estimation of Nmass, Cmass and LMA comparing with foliar pigments. Our results, based on the comprehensive analysis of spectra-trait relationships across time, sites and light environments, highlight the capacity and potential limitations to use leaf spectra to estimate leaf traits with strong seasonal variability, as an alternative to time-consuming traditional wet lab approaches.

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Article

Dynamic aperture factor analysis/target transformation (DAFA/TT) for Mg-serpentine and Mg-carbonate mapping on Mars with CRISM near-infrared data

2020-10-17 , Lin, Honglei , Tarnas, Jesse D. , Mustard, John F. , Zhang, Xia , Wei, Yong , Wan, Weixing , Klein, Frieder , Kellner, James R.

Serpentine and carbonate are products of serpentinization and carbonation processes on Earth, Mars, and other celestial bodies. Their presence implies that localized habitable environments may have existed on ancient Mars. Factor Analysis and Target Transformation (FATT) techniques have been applied to hyperspectral data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) to identify possible serpentine and Mg-carbonate-bearing outcrops. FATT techniques are capable of suggesting the presence of individual spectral signals in complex spectral mixtures. Applications of FATT techniques to CRISM data thus far only evaluate whether an entire analyzed image (≈ 3 × 105 pixels) may contain spectral information consistent with a specific mineral of interest. The spatial distribution of spectral signal from the possible mineral is not determined, making it difficult to validate a reported detection and also to understand the geologic context of any purported detections. We developed a method called Dynamic Aperture Factor Analysis/Target Transformation (DAFA/TT) to highlight the locations in a CRISM observation (or any similar laboratory or remotely acquired data set) most likely to contain spectra of specific minerals of interest. DAFA/TT determines the locations of possible target mineral spectral signals within hyperspectral images by performing FATT in small moving windows with different geometries, and only accepting pixels with positive detections in all cluster geometries as possible detections. DAFA/TT was applied to a hyperspectral image of a serpentinite from Oman for validation testing in a simplified laboratory setting. The mineral distribution determined by DAFA/TT application to the laboratory hyperspectral image was consistent with Raman analysis of the serpentinite sample. DAFA/TT also successfully mapped the spatial distribution of Mg-serpentine and Mg-carbonate previously detected in CRISM data using band parameter mapping and extraction of ratioed spectra. We applied DAFA/TT to CRISM images in some olivine-rich regions of Mars to characterize the spatial distribution of Mg-serpentine and Mg-carbonate-bearing outcrops.

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