remote sensing Article Assessing Typhoon-Induced Canopy Damage Using Vegetation Indices in the Fushan Experimental Forest, Taiwan Jonathan Peereman 1,2,3, James Aaron Hogan 4 and Teng-Chiu Lin 2,* 1 Biodiversity Program, Taiwan International Graduate Program, Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica and National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 11529, Taiwan;
[email protected] 2 Department of Life Science, National Taiwan Normal University, No. 88, Section 4, TingChow Road, Taipei 11677, Taiwan 3 Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan 4 Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA; jhogan@fiu.edu * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 2 May 2020; Accepted: 20 May 2020; Published: 21 May 2020 Abstract: Cyclonic windstorms profoundly affect forest structure and function throughout the tropics and subtropics. Remote sensing techniques and vegetation indices (VIs) have improved our ability to characterize cyclone impacts over broad spatial scales. Although VIs are useful for understanding changes in forest cover, their consistency on detecting changes in vegetation cover is not well understood. A better understanding of the similarities and differences in commonly used VIs across disturbance events and forest types is needed to reconcile the results from different studies. Using Landsat imagery, we analyzed the change between pre- and post-typhoon VI values (DVIs) of four VIs for five typhoons (local name of cyclones in the North Pacific) that affected the Fushan Experimental Forest of Taiwan. We found that typhoons varied in their effect on forest canopy cover even when they had comparable trajectories, wind speeds, and rainfall. Most VIs measured a decrease in forest cover following typhoons, ranging from 1.18% to 19.87%; however, the direction of − − DVI–topography relationships varied among events.