Seeing the Disturbed Forest for the Trees: Remote Sensing Is Underutilized to Quantify Critical Zone Response to Unprecedented Disturbance

作者：Kyotaek Hwang, A. A. Harpold, C. Tague, Lauren E. L. Lowman, Gabrielle Boisramé, Katherine B. Lininger, Pamela Sullivan, Aidan Manning, Louis Graup, M. E. Litvak, Gabriel Lewis, Kate Miller, P. D. Brooks, Holly Barnard · 发表于：Earth s Future · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1029/2022ef003314 · 被引用次数：7 · 研究领域：Fire effects on ecosystems、Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics、Remote Sensing in Agriculture

Abstract Understanding the severity and extent of near surface critical zone (CZ) disturbances and their ecosystem response is a pressing concern in the face of increasing human and natural disturbances. Predicting disturbance severity and recovery in a changing climate requires comprehensive understanding of ecosystem feedbacks among vegetation and the surrounding environment, including climate, hydrology, geomorphology, and biogeochemistry. Field surveys and satellite remote sensing have limited ability to effectively capture the spatial and temporal variability of disturbance and CZ properties. Technological advances in remote sensing using new sensors and new platforms have improved observations of changes in vegetation canopy structure and productivity; however, integrating measures of forest disturbance from various sensing platforms is complex. By connecting the potential for remote sensing technologies to observe different CZ disturbance vectors, we show that lower severity disturbance and slower vegetation recovery are more difficult to quantify. Case studies in montane forests from the western United States highlight new opportunities, including evaluating post‐disturbance forest recovery at multiple scales, shedding light on understory vegetation regrowth, detecting specific physiological responses, and refining ecohydrological modeling. Learning from regional CZ disturbance case studies, we propose future directions to synthesize fragmented findings with (a) new d...