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Mapping a Keystone Shrub Species, Huckleberry (Vaccinium Membranaceum), Using Seasonal Colour Change in the Rocky Mountains

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Mapping a Keystone Shrub Species, Huckleberry (Vaccinium Membranaceum), Using Seasonal Colour Change in the Rocky Mountains International Journal of Remote Sensing ISSN: 0143-1161 (Print) 1366-5901 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tres20 Mapping a keystone shrub species, huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum), using seasonal colour change in the Rocky Mountains Carolyn R. Shores, Nate Mikle & Tab A. Graves To cite this article: Carolyn R. Shores, Nate Mikle & Tab A. Graves (2019) Mapping a keystone shrub species, huckleberry (Vacciniummembranaceum), using seasonal colour change in the Rocky Mountains, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 40:15, 5695-5715, DOI: 10.1080/01431161.2019.1580819 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2019.1580819 View supplementary material Published online: 26 Feb 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 189 View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tres20 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF REMOTE SENSING 2019, VOL. 40, NO. 15, 5695–5715 https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2019.1580819 Mapping a keystone shrub species, huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum), using seasonal colour change in the Rocky Mountains Carolyn R. Shores a,b, Nate Miklec and Tab A. Gravesc aFish and Wildlife, Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, William’s Lake, BC, Canada; bPredator Ecology Lab, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; cUS Geological Survey, Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, West Glacier, MT, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Black huckleberries (Vaccinium membranaceum) provide a critical Received 27 April 2018 food resource to many wildlife species, including apex omnivores Accepted 28 January 2019 such as the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), and play an important socioeconomic role for many communities in western North America, especially indigenous peoples. Remote sensing imagery offers the potential for accurate landscape-level mapping of huck- leberries because the shrub changes colour seasonally. We devel- oped two methods, for local and regional scales, to map a shrub species using leaf seasonal colour change from remote sensing imagery. We assessed accuracy with ground-based vegetation surveys. The high-resolution supervised random forest classifica- tion from one-meter resolution National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery achieved an overall accuracy of 75.31% (kappa = 0.26). The approach using multi-temporal 30-meter Landsat imagery similarly had an overall accuracy of 79.19% (kappa = .31). We found underprediction error was related to higher forest cover and a lack of visible colour change on the ground in some plots. Where forest cover was low, both models performed better. In areas with <10% forest cover, the high- resolution classification achieved an accuracy of 80.73% (kappa = 0.48), while the Landsat model had an accuracy of 82.55% (kappa = 0.47). Based on the fine-scale predictions, we found that 94% of huckleberry shrubs identified in our study area of Glacier National Park, Montana, USA are over 100 meters from human recreation trails. This information could be combined with productivity and phenology information to estimate the timing and availability of food resources for wildlife and to provide managers with a tool to identify and manage huckleberries. The development of the multi-temporal Landsat models sets the stage for assessment of impacts of disturbance at regional scales on this ecologically, culturally, and economically important shrub species. Our approach to map huckleberries is straightforward, efficient and accessible to wildlife and environmental managers and researchers in diverse fields. CONTACT Carolyn R. Shores [email protected] Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, 640 Borland St., William’s Lake, BC V2G 4T1, Canada Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here. © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 5696 C. SHORES ET AL. 1. Introduction Black huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum), hereafter ‘huckleberry’, is a keystone plant species that provides food and shelter for bears, birds, small mammals, pollinators, and insects. It is a culturally and economically important resource for humans, particu- larly indigenous communities in both the United States and Canada (Beer 1943; Jonkel and Greer 1963; Lehtinen 1983; Kendall 1986; Parish, Coupé, and Lloyd 1996; Richards and Alexander 2006; Nielsen et al. 2010). However, changing temperature, drought and snowpack, as well as increases in both natural and human disturbance may lead to significant shifts in huckleberry distribution, and landscape level approaches to map huckleberries and understand these shifts do not yet exist. Huckleberries are especially important to threatened grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) popu- lations in the western interior of North America (USFWS 2017a; COSEWIC 2012) where energy dense foods such as salmon are not available (Kendall 1986). Grizzly bear habitat selection, abundance, survival, reproductive success, and dispersal are related to berry productivity (Nielsen et al. 2003, 2010; Lamb et al. 2017; McLellan 2015; Robbins, Schwartz, and Felicetti 2004; Graves et al. 2012). Given the important role huckleberries play in bear life history, as well as those of other species, biologists need tools to map and assess changes to the distribution of huckleberries to understand this keystone shrub’s conservation options and needs. However, since 1995, scant research has focused on this poorly understood shrub and few reliable maps exist of their distribution. While one recent environmental niche model predicted that huckleberry distribution should expand northwards in Alberta, Canada, shifts have not yet been predicted for the southern edge of its distribution, which overlaps with threatened grizzly populations (Roberts, Nielsen, and Stenhouse 2014). Also, while historically fire was used to reduce canopy cover and promote huckleberry productivity, increased wildfire occurrence and intensity stemming from warmer temperatures (Rocca et al. 2014) may decrease or delay huckleberry regenera- tion and dispersal by destroying underground rhizomes, the primary mode of reproduc- tion (Roberts, Nielsen, and Stenhouse 2014; Ingersoll and Wilson 1990). The Northern Rockies region, where huckleberries are a crucial food source for grizzlies, has seen the largest increase in frequency of large fires and the total number of fires out of all regions in North America (Westerling et al. 2006) and is expected to see further increases in fire frequency and severity (Rocca et al. 2014). The cumulative effect of altered fire regimes may have changed or may yet change the landscape level distribution of huckleberries. The potential impacts to this keystone plant from climate change, its importance to threatened grizzly bear populations, and its value as a cultural food to indigenous communities emphasise the need for a tool to map huckleberries at a regional scale, track temporal changes in its distribution, and to test species distribution models. Accurate regional distribution maps are needed to understand the effects of disturbance on the shrub’s distribution and subsequent impacts to higher trophic levels. Digital remote sensing using Landsat imagery that has broad spatial and high temporal resolution offers the potential for mapping changes in plant species distribu- tion at the landscape scale. Huckleberry leaves usually turn a bright red colour in late summer and early autumn (August-September), making them easily distinguishable from other plant species (Figure 1), although the timing of leaf senescence can vary INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF REMOTE SENSING 5697 Figure 1. Colour change of huckleberry leaves (Vaccinium membranaceum) in Glacier National Park, Montana from 30 August 2017. Credit: USGS. by temperature, moisture, solar radiation and foliar nitrogen, so may vary between years and areas (Burger and Edwards 1996; Buchanan-Wollaston 1997; Chalker-Scott 1999; Schaberg et al. 2003). Plant leaf colour change has been used to track phenological events such as spring green-up and autumn colouring (Cleland et al. 2007; Coops et al. 2012) map the distribution of invasive plant species (Ji and Wang 2015), and study insect disturbance (Franklin et al. 2003; Meddens et al. 2013). The change in colour from green to red of dying conifers has been used to map pine beetle outbreaks across wide swaths of wilderness in Canada. Beetle-killed trees were identified with the red-green index (RGI) or the ratio of red reflectance to green reflectance, and with differences in near- infrared (NIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands (Hicke and Logan 2009; Coops et al. 2006; Meddens et al. 2013). Landsat satellite imagery is also especially well-suited to mapping large scale changes to plant species distribution because of its broad spatial extent, high temporal resolution and multispectral capability. The global coverage of Landsat data as well as its imagery collection early in the growing season allows for multi-temporal analyses (Cohen and Goward 2004) to detect phenological changes. However, Landsat grid cells (0.09 ha in size) rarely, if ever, have 100% huckleberry cover and the shrubs may be obscured by tree canopy. Therefore, research is needed to quantify the level of huckleberry cover that can be detected by Landsat classification methods and at what tree cover huckleberries are no longer accurately detected. Other kinds of aerial imagery, such as the National Agricultural Imagery Program
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