Reliability of canopy photography for forest ecology and biodiversity studies

作者：Anouk von Meijenfeldt, Francesco Chianucci, Francesca Rigo, Jente Ottenburghs, Andreas Hilpold, Marco Mina · 发表于：Ecological Indicators · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.ecolind.2025.113293 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Remote Sensing and LiDAR Applications、Remote Sensing in Agriculture、Species Distribution and Climate Change

• Canopy structural attributes are meaningful indicators for forest research. • Digital hemispherical photography is most suitable to differentiate forest types. • Diversity of understory plants depends more on foliage clumping than openness. • Promoting canopy heterogeneity can boost understory plant diversity and biodiversity. Understory is a key component of forest biodiversity. The structure of the forest stand and the horizontal composition of the canopy play a major role on the light regime of the understory, which in turn affects the abundance and the diversity of the understory plant community. Reliable assessments of canopy structural attributes are essential for forest research and biodiversity monitoring programs, as well as to study the relationship between canopy and understory plant communities. Canopy photography is a widely used method but it is still not clear which photographic techniques is better suited to capture canopy attributes at stand-level that can be relevant in forest biodiversity studies. For this purpose, we collected canopy structure and understory plant diversity data on 51 forest sites in the north-eastern Italian Alps, encompassing a diversity of forest types from low-elevation deciduous, to mixed montane stands to subalpine coniferous forests. Canopy images were acquired using both digital cover (DCP) and hemispherical (DHP) photography, and analysed canopy structural attributes. These attributes were then compared to tree species compositi...