TY - JOUR
T1 - The spectral species concept in living color
AU - Rocchini, Duccio
AU - Santos, Maria J.
AU - Ustin, Susan L.
AU - Féret, Jean‐baptiste
AU - Asner, Gregory P.
AU - Beierkuhnlein, Carl
AU - Dalponte, Michele
AU - Feilhauer, Hannes
AU - Foody, Giles M.
AU - Geller, Gary N.
AU - Gillespie, Thomas W.
AU - He, Kate S.
AU - Kleijn, David
AU - Leitão, Pedro J.
AU - Malavasi, Marco
AU - Moudrý, Vítězslav
AU - Müllerová, Jana
AU - Nagendra, Harini
AU - Normand, Signe
AU - Ricotta, Carlo
AU - Schaepman, Michael E.
AU - Schmidtlein, Sebastian
AU - Skidmore, A.K.
AU - Šímová, Petra
AU - Torresani, Michele
AU - Townsend, Philip A.
AU - Turner, Woody
AU - Vihervaara, Petteri
AU - Wegmann, Martin
AU - Lenoir, Jonathan
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to the handling editor and to two anonymous reviewers who provided useful insights on a previous version of this manuscript. This research was carried out, in part, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). DR and DK were partially supported by the H2020 Project SHOWCASE (Grant agreement No 862480). DR was also partially supported by the H2020 COST Action CA17134 ‘Optical synergies for spatiotemporal sensing of scalable ecophysiological traits (SENSECO)’. JBF was funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France) (BioCop project—ANR‐17‐CE32‐0001).
Funding Information:
We are grateful to the handling editor and to two anonymous reviewers who provided useful insights on a previous version of this manuscript. This research was carried out, in part, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). DR and DK were partially supported by the H2020 Project SHOWCASE (Grant agreement No 862480). DR was also partially supported by the H2020 COST Action CA17134 ‘Optical synergies for spatiotemporal sensing of scalable ecophysiological traits (SENSECO)’. JBF was funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France) (BioCop project—ANR-17-CE32-0001).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022. The Authors.
PY - 2022/9
Y1 - 2022/9
N2 - Biodiversity monitoring is an almost inconceivable challenge at the scale of the entire Earth. The current (and soon to be flown) generation of spaceborne and airborne optical sensors (i.e., imaging spectrometers) can collect detailed information at unprecedented spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions. These new data streams are preceded by a revolution in modeling and analytics that can utilize the richness of these datasets to measure a wide range of plant traits, community composition, and ecosystem functions. At the heart of this framework for monitoring plant biodiversity is the idea of remotely identifying species by making use of the ‘spectral species’ concept. In theory, the spectral species concept can be defined as a species characterized by a unique spectral signature and thus remotely detectable within pixel units of a spectral image. In reality, depending on spatial resolution, pixels may contain several species which renders species-specific assignment of spectral information more challenging. The aim of this paper is to review the spectral species concept and relate it to underlying ecological principles, while also discussing the complexities, challenges and opportunities to apply this concept given current and future scientific advances in remote sensing.
AB - Biodiversity monitoring is an almost inconceivable challenge at the scale of the entire Earth. The current (and soon to be flown) generation of spaceborne and airborne optical sensors (i.e., imaging spectrometers) can collect detailed information at unprecedented spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions. These new data streams are preceded by a revolution in modeling and analytics that can utilize the richness of these datasets to measure a wide range of plant traits, community composition, and ecosystem functions. At the heart of this framework for monitoring plant biodiversity is the idea of remotely identifying species by making use of the ‘spectral species’ concept. In theory, the spectral species concept can be defined as a species characterized by a unique spectral signature and thus remotely detectable within pixel units of a spectral image. In reality, depending on spatial resolution, pixels may contain several species which renders species-specific assignment of spectral information more challenging. The aim of this paper is to review the spectral species concept and relate it to underlying ecological principles, while also discussing the complexities, challenges and opportunities to apply this concept given current and future scientific advances in remote sensing.
KW - ITC-ISI-JOURNAL-ARTICLE
U2 - 10.1029/2022JG007026
DO - 10.1029/2022JG007026
M3 - Review article
SN - 2169-8953
VL - 127
JO - Journal of geophysical research: Biogeosciences
JF - Journal of geophysical research: Biogeosciences
IS - 9
M1 - e2022JG007026
ER -