Quantifying livestock effects on bunchgrass vegetation with Landsat ETM+ data across a single growing season

ABSTRACT

Grassland systems provide important habitat for native biodiversity and forage for livestock, with livestock grazing playing an important role influencing sustainable ecosystem function. Traditional field techniques to monitor the effects of grazing on vegetation are costly and limited to small spatial scales. Remote sensing has the potential to provide quantitative and repeatable monitoring data across large spatial and temporal scales for more informed grazing management. To investigate the ability of vegetation metrics derived from remotely sensed imagery to detect the effect of cattle grazing on bunchgrass grassland vegetation across a growing season, we sampled 32 sites across four prescribed stocking rates on a section of Pacific Northwest bunchgrass prairie in northeastern Oregon. We collected vegetation data on vertical structure, biomass, and cover at three different time periods: June, August, and October 2012 to understand the potential to measure vegetation at different phenological stages across a growing season. We acquired remotely sensed Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data closest in date to three field sampling bouts. We correlated the field vegetation metrics to Landsat spectral bands, 14 commonly used vegetation indices, and the tasselled cap wetness, brightness, and greenness transformations. To increase the explanatory value of the satellite-derived data, full, stepwise, and best-subset multiple regression models were fit to each of the vegetation metrics at the three different times of the year. Predicted vegetation metrics were then mapped across the study area. Field-based results indicated that as the stocking rate increased, the mean vegetation amounts of vertical structure, cover, and biomass decreased. The multiple regression models using common vegetation indices had the ability to discern different levels of grazing across the study area, but different spectral indices proved to be the best predictors of vegetation metrics for differing phenological windows. Field measures of vegetation cover yielded the highest correlations to remotely sensed data across all sampling periods. Our results from this analysis can be used to improve grassland monitoring by providing multiple measures of vegetation amounts across a growing season that better align with land management decision making.

Acknowledgements

We thank all the individuals who assisted with the collection of field data and The Nature Conservancy NE Oregon field office staff. We are grateful to J.D. Wulfhorst, Arjan Meddens, and Scott Butterfield for insightful editorial comments during the writing of this manuscript. We also would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the Editor for valuable feedback, which greatly improved the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This research was completed with support from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) [grant number NNX10AT77A]; NSF Idaho EPSCoR [grant number EPS-0814387]; NSF GK-12 [grant number DGE – 0841199]; and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Zumwalt Prairie preserve.