Abstract:The scale-location specific control on vegetation distribution was investigated through continuous wavelet transforms approaches in subtropical mountain-hill region, Fujian, China. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was calculated as an indicator of vegetation greenness using Chinese Environmental Disaster Reduction Satellite images along latitudinal and longitudinal transects. Four scales of variations were identified from the local wavelet spectrum of NDVI, with much stronger wavelet variances observed at larger scales. The characteristic scale of vegetation distribution within mountainous and hilly regions in Southeast China was around 20 km. Significantly strong wavelet coherency was generally examined in regions with very diverse topography, typically characterized as small mountains and hills fractured by rivers and residents. The continuous wavelet based approaches provided valuable insight on the hierarchical structure and its corresponding characteristic scales of ecosystems, which might be applied in defining proper levels in multilevel models and optimal bandwidths in Geographically Weighted Regression.

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