Remote sensing from unoccupied aerial systems: Opportunities to enhance Arctic plant ecology in a changing climate

Abstract

The Arctic is warming at a faster rate than any other biome on Earth, resulting in widespread changes in vegetation composition, structure and function that have important feedbacks to the global climate system. The heterogeneous nature of arctic landscapes creates challenges for monitoring and improving understanding of these ecosystems, as current efforts typically rely on ground, airborne or satellite‐based observations that are limited in space, time or pixel resolution. The use of remote sensing instruments on small unoccupied aerial systems (UASs) has emerged as an important tool to bridge the gap between detailed, but spatially limited ground‐level measurements, and lower resolution, but spatially extensive high‐altitude airborne and satellite observations. UASs allow researchers to view, describe and quantify vegetation dynamics at fine spatial scales (1–10 cm) over areas much larger than typical field plots. UASs can be deployed with a high degree of temporal flexibility, enabling observation across diurnal, seasonal and annual time‐scales. Here we review how established and emerging UAS remote sensing technologies can enhance arctic plant ecological research by quantifying fine‐scale vegetation patterns and processes, and by enhancing the ability to link ground‐based measurements with broader‐scale information obtained from airborne and satellite platforms. Synthesis. Improved ecological understanding and model representation of arctic vegetation is needed to forecast the fate of the Arctic in a rapidly changing climate. Observations from UASs provide an approach to address this need, however, the use of this technology in the Arctic currently remains limited. Here we share recommendations to better enable and encourage the use of UASs to improve the description, scaling and model representation of arctic vegetation.

PiCAM: A Raspberry Pi‐based open‐source, low‐power camera system for monitoring plant phenology in Arctic environments

“…Using these PiCAMs, we were able to obtain robust time‐series observations of plant growth in autumn, as well as in spring (Figure 5) a shoulder season that is essential for phenology studies (Myers‐Smith et al., 2020). In addition, our compact, lightweight design significantly simplified the installation, making it possible to deploy a large number (26 in our case) of PiCAMs with minimal cost, essential for monitoring the heterogeneous plant phenology of Arctic landscapes (Yang et al., 2022).…”

“…The time‐series images and GCC data used to support this study can be found at Yang, McMahon, Anderson, Hantson, and Serbin (2023). The data set that included images collected by all 26 PiCAMs between August 2021 and July 2022 is available at Yang, McMahon, Anderson, Hantson, Ely, and Serbin (2023). A complete guide on how to assemble, programme and operate a PiCAM can also be found on GitHub (https://github.com/TESTgroup-BNL/PiCam).…”

“…trees, ground towers or buildings) and are not robust or low power enough for long unattended usage in harsh environments. Their deployment in the tundra region has been extremely difficult and costly, especially when a large number of cameras are needed to capture the heterogenous phenology of tundra landscapes (Myers‐Smith et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2022). For example, Andresen et al.…”

Summer drought weakens land surface cooling of tundra vegetation

“…However, heatwaves and droughts may weaken this cooling effect and create a sensible heat flux dominance, further intensifying the heatwave, such as during the 2010 heatwave and drought in western Siberia (Hauser et al 2016). Most studies linking land surface energy budgets with soil moisture relied on a few point measurements from flux chambers or towers (Marchand et al 2006, Thunberg et al 2021, Zona et al 2022 Yet, we have limited knowledge of how the effect of drought on land surface cooling varies across space at landscape and regional scales in the tundra biome (Farella et al 2022, Yang et al 2022.…”

Mapping water content in drying Antarctic moss communities using UAS‐borne SWIR imaging spectroscopy

“…These factors make the spatial monitoring of community changes via traditional methods challenging (Convey et al., 2014). unoccupied aerial systems (UAS) or drones are a commonly used tool for monitoring natural vegetation and have been demonstrated to be suitable for mapping the extent and biophysical properties of moss beds in Antarctica (Bollard et al., 2022; Bollard‐Breen et al., 2014; Lucieer et al., 2014; Malenovsky et al., 2013; Malenovský et al., 2017; Turner et al., 2014, 2018) and other similar vegetation communities in the Arctic (Nelson et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2022). A benefit of using UAS remote sensing to study Antarctic moss beds is the ability to capture biophysical and biochemical moss traits at ultrahigh spatial resolution (<5 cm/pixel) over entire catchment areas.…”