Methods of Estimating Aboveground Net Primary Productivity

Sala, Osvaldo E.; Austin, Amy T.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-1224-9_3

Cited by 151 publications

(135 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Therefore, non-destructive biomass estimation methods are widely applied in ecosystem research (Paruelo et al, 1997), especially in long-term field experiments (Kongstad et al, 2012;Tielbörger et al, 2014). The values obtained from these non-destructive methods are either reported as proxies for aboveground biomass, or are converted to aboveground biomass via allometric equations obtained through calibration (Byrne et al, 2011;Sala and Austin, 2000;Singh et al, 1975).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, these relationships may be inappropriate for estimating biomass across all treatments, since experimental treatments may change the relationship between biomass proxies and actual biomass. For example, both fertilization (Shaver et al, 2001) and grazing (Frank and McNaughton, 1990) have been shown to alter the proxy-biomass relationship due to changes in plant community composition (Sala and Austin, 2000;Shaver et al, 2001). These findings raise the question whether the same relationship can be used across multiple years or across different treatments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Estimating aboveground herbaceous plant biomass via proxies: The confounding effects of sampling year and precipitation

Ónodi

Kertész

Kovács-Láng

et al. 2017

Ecological Indicators

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Direct measurements of aboveground plant biomass are often not feasible, thus various biomass proxies are in use. To obtain biomass estimates, these proxies are calibrated against actual biomass, and the resulting proxy-biomass relationship is often used across multiple years and experimental treatments within a study. We investigated how the proxy-biomass relationship varied across years and considered interannual precipitation variability as a contributing factor.We sampled a perennial grassland for ten consecutive years (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012) in central Hungary and estimated vegetation cover and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI); two frequently used biomass proxies representing two contrasting methods. Aboveground live herbaceous plant biomass was harvested from each plot after sampling, and regression models were used to assess the relationship between biomass proxies and actual aboveground biomass.We found that cover and NDVI were equally effective at estimating biomass. However, the relationship between either biomass proxy and actual biomass varied amongst years, and this was related to the amount of precipitation. In wetter years, proxy-biomass relationships were steeper than in drier years.These results indicate that using the same proxy-biomass relationship across different years or precipitation regimes may not be valid and may introduce systematic error into biomass estimations in long-term studies or precipitation manipulation experiments. Keywords aboveground plant biomass, field spectroscopy, interannual validity, long-term studies, NDVI, precipitation, proxy-biomass relationship, visual cover estimation Nomenclature The Plant List (2010) 4

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating aboveground herbaceous plant biomass via proxies: The confounding effects of sampling year and precipitation

Ónodi

Kertész

Kovács-Láng

et al. 2017

Ecological Indicators

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“…It is widely used in ecosystem research, including observational (Knapp et al 2015, Sala et al 1988, experimental (Fay et al 2011;Grime et al 2008), and modelling studies (Scurlock et al 2002). Harvesting is the conventional method for aboveground biomass estimation by means of removing, separating into fractions, drying and weighing plant material (Sala and Austin 2000). This method can be used in observational studies (Sala et al 1988), in field experiments with sufficiently large plots (Fay et al 2011), or in ecosystems that are grazed or mown (Gilgen and Buchmann 2009), where biomass removal is the normal management.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several non-destructive methods have been suggested and used for estimating aboveground biomass and aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) (Byrne et al 2011, Sala and Austin, 2000, Wilson, 2011, but there is not a single universal approach applied in ecological studies. The choice of the method may depend on several factors including the purpose of the research, the structure of the vegetation, the size of the area to be assessed, repeatability of the sampling, accuracy required, scientific traditions, time and workforce available (Catchpole and Wheeler, 1992).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing the accuracy of three non-destructive methods in estimating aboveground plant biomass

et al. 2017

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Abstract:Aboveground plant biomass is one of the most important features of ecosystems, and it is widely used in ecosystem research. Non-destructive biomass estimation methods provide an important toolkit, because the destructive harvesting method is in many cases not feasible. However, only few studies have compared the accuracy of these methods in grassland communities to date. We studied the accuracy of three widely used methods for estimation of aboveground biomass: the visual cover estimation method, the point intercept method, and field spectroscopy. We applied them in three independent series of field samplings in semi-arid sand grasslands in Central Hungary. For each sampling method, we applied linear regression to assess the strength of the relationship between biomass proxies and actual aboveground biomass, and used coefficient of determination to evaluate accuracy. We found no evidence that the visual cover estimation, which is generally considered as a subjective method, was less accurate than point intercept method or field spectroscopy in estimating biomass. Based on our three datasets, we found that accuracy was lower for the point intercept method compared to the other two methods, while field spectroscopy and visual cover estimation were similar to each other in the semi-arid sand grassland community. We conclude that visual cover estimation can be as accurate for estimating aboveground biomass as other approaches, thus the choice amongst the methods should be based on additional pros and cons associated with each of the method and related to the specific research objective. Nomenclature:The Plant List (2010).

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“…Vegetation canopy cover is another variable used as a non-destructive surrogate for biomass estimates (Montes et al 2000;Sala and Austin 2000). In fact, canopy cover is an important ecological characteristic and is generally calculated as the percentage of ground surface covered by vegetation.…”

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confidence: 99%

A reliable and non-destructive method for estimating forage shrub cover and biomass in arid environments using digital vegetation charting technique

Louhaichi

Hassan²,

Clifton³

et al. 2017

Agroforest Syst

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Despite the importance of fodder shrubs to small ruminant diets and production in arid and semiarid ecosystems, they are often not considered when quantifying grazing land potential. This oversight is mainly due to the time consuming and costly traditional techniques used to estimate shrub biomass. The shrub fodder component should be measured to avoid underestimation of the carrying capacity of rangelands. In this study, we present a fast, reliable and non-destructive method to estimate canopy vegetation cover to obtain aboveground shrub biomass. The experiment was conducted under field conditions in northwest Syria, where seedlings of seven shrub species were monitored for one year: Atriplex leucoclada (Moq.) Boiss., A. halimus L., A. lentiformis (Torr.) S. Watson, A. canescens (Pursh) Nutt., A. nummularia Lindl., Salsola vermiculata L. and Haloxylon aphyllum (C.A. Meyer) Bunge. The experimental layout was a randomized complete block design with five replications. We explored the effectiveness of digital vegetation charting technique (DVCT) for estimating shrub canopy cover.Aboveground shrub biomass was clipped to estimate the dry matter (DM) weight per species and to determine its relationship to canopy cover. In this study, an estimate of greenness (percent green vegetation cover) was extracted by way of greenness algorithms. Simple linear regressions between vegetation cover and biomass for 210 plots were performed. The cover of the seven species differed (P \ 0.01): A. leucoclada had the highest vegetation cover (56%) and H. aphyllum the lowest (7%). Vegetation cover and DM biomass were positively correlated (P \ 0.01) with R-squared ranging from 0.66 (H. aphyllum) to 0.84 (S. vermiculata). Our method provided reasonable estimations of canopy coverage which could predict aboveground phytomass. We conclude that DVCT offers a rapid, reliable and consistent measurement of shrub cover and biomass provided that shrubs have open architecture. This study shows the potential of digital cameras and image processing to determine cover/biomass in a nondestructive, timely and cost efficient way.

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Methods of Estimating Aboveground Net Primary Productivity

Cited by 151 publications

References 21 publications

Estimating aboveground herbaceous plant biomass via proxies: The confounding effects of sampling year and precipitation

Estimating aboveground herbaceous plant biomass via proxies: The confounding effects of sampling year and precipitation

Comparing the accuracy of three non-destructive methods in estimating aboveground plant biomass

A reliable and non-destructive method for estimating forage shrub cover and biomass in arid environments using digital vegetation charting technique

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