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<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">Anna K. Schweiger & Etienne Laliberté, Nature
Communications, May 19, 2022</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; letter-spacing: -0.1pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></o:p></span></span><br>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">Abstract:
</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background: white; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Monitoring the rapid and extensive changes in plant species distributions occurring worldwide requires large-scale, continuous and
repeated biodiversity assessments. Imaging spectrometers are at the core of novel spaceborne sensor fleets designed for this task, but the degree to which they can capture plant species composition and diversity across ecosystems has yet to be determined.
Here we use imaging spectroscopy and vegetation data collected by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) to show that at the landscape level, spectral beta-diversity—calculated directly from spectral images—captures changes in plant species composition
across all major biomes in the United States ranging from arctic tundra to tropical forests. At the local level, however, the relationship between spectral alpha- and plant alpha-diversity was positive only at sites with high canopy density and large plant-to-pixel
size. Our study demonstrates that changes in plant species composition and diversity can be effectively and reliably assessed with imaging spectroscopy across terrestrial ecosystems at the beta-diversity scale—the spatial scale of spaceborne missions—paving
the way for close-to-real-time biodiversity monitoring at the planetary level.</span><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></o:p></p>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background: white; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Read full article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30369-6</span><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span></o:p></p>
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