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Evaluating the Relationships of Phenological and Inter-Annual Evaluating the Relationships of Phenological and Inter-Annual Landscape Dynamics with Farmland Biodiversity using Multi-Spatial and Multi- Temporal Remote Sensing Data By Niloofar Alavi A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Geography and Environmental Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario September 2019 © Niloofar Alavi, 2019 i Abstract Agricultural landscapes are highly variable ecosystems and are home to many species. Farmland spatial heterogeneity and phenological and inter-annual agricultural landscape dynamics has been shown to be related to species diversity. Remote sensing provides data that enable monitoring landscape changes at multiple temporal and spatial scales. The goal of this research was to determine the response of biodiversity to phenological and inter-annual landscape dynamics. The study area is the predominantly agricultural region of eastern Ontario. Ninety-three sample landscapes were selected prior to this research. Biodiversity data were collected during the summers of 2011 and 2012 within a 1 × 1 km area at each landscape. This extent and 3 × 3 km were selected for this research to analyze the impacts of spatial scale on biodiversity response. Relationships between biodiversity and vegetation phenology were modelled using MODIS NDVI, while relationships between biodiversity and long term inter-annual vegetation changes were modelled using Landsat NDVI and Tasseled Cap components. Random Forest Regression was used to determine relative variable importance over the many biodiversity models produced. The most important variables were identified and subsequently used in step-wise regression to determine model significance, the landscape variables entered, and the direction of their relationship with biodiversity. Results demonstrated that phenological and inter-annual changes in vegetation dynamics were related to biodiversity. For MODIS, most 3 × 3 km models were significant, whereas most 1 × 1 km models were not. For Landsat, model performance was not consistently different for the two extents, indicating that model performance can depend on landscape extent when coarse spatial resolution data are used. Plant diversity was lower when the time of onset of greenness ii was later, while beetle diversity was higher when vegetation productivity was higher at the time of onset of greenness. Plant and beetle diversity both were lower when landscape brightness was higher and higher when landscape wetness was higher. The inter-annual temporal variability of Landsat NDVI as well as the percentage of pixels in a landscape with significantly decreasing trends in NDVI demonstrated a negative relationship with plant diversity. This thesis emphasized the importance of spatial and temporal variations in the landscape on biodiversity, especially in highly variable landscapes such as agricultural lands. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Doug King for taking me on as a student, mentoring me and supporting me both academically and emotionally both during my whole PhD journey and the thesis process. Thank you for encouraging me during hard times and having faith in me and my way and thank you for all you time and energy and being available to discuss various issues throughout this entire process. I also would like to thank my committee members Dr. Scott Mitchell and Dr. Dennis Duro for providing valuable advice and feedback throughout various stages of this thesis. I would like to thank the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University for providing me with great financial support and scholarships, teaching assistantship and instructor positions. I am grateful to the Geomatics and Landscape Ecology (GLEL) Lab and to NSERC for providing the funding for this research through a Strategic Project Grant to Drs. Fahrig, King, Lindsay and Mitchell and through a Discovery Grant to Dr. King. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my colleagues at Agriculture and Agri- food Canada, Science and Technology Branch, Earth Observation (STB-EO) team, especially Drs. Andrew Davidson, Catherine Champagne and Laura Dingle Robertson for providing me with the MODIS data and relevant technical tools that I needed for this research. I also would like to express my deep appreciation to my colleagues at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Landscape Science and Technology Division (LSTD), National Wildlife Research Centre, especially Dr. Darren Pouliot, for providing me with technical tools and valuable comments on the temporal analysis of MODIS and Landsat data of this thesis. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their encouragement and endless support of all kinds, my mother, Zari, and my late father, Mohammad who taught me the value of science iii and higher education, my siblings, Saman, Sepideh and Ali who lead me by example, and my closest friends and besties Hoda, Maryam, Neagr and Katty for never giving up believing in me and always being by my side despite the far distance between us. iv Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... v List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ ix List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... xi List of Appendices ....................................................................................................................... xv List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................. xvi Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Biodiversity and its importance in agro-ecosystems .......................................................... 1 1.2. Biodiversity and landscape heterogeneity in agro-ecosystems ........................................... 1 1.3. Remote sensing data resolution .......................................................................................... 5 1.4. Research goal and questions ............................................................................................... 7 1.5. Thesis structure ................................................................................................................. 10 Chapter 2: Literature review ........................................................................................................ 13 2.1. Biodiversity: concepts and relations with agricultural landscape heterogeneity .............. 13 2.2. Spatial and temporal scale of study in biodiversity modeling .......................................... 23 2.3. Biodiversity modeling using remote sensing .................................................................... 27 2.3.1. Scale and sensor considerations ................................................................................ 29 2.3.1.1. MODIS and Landsat time series for analysis of vegetation dynamics .............. 32 2.3.1.2. Remote sensing approaches in biodiversity modelling ...................................... 39 2.4. Summary ........................................................................................................................... 45 Chapter 3: Study site and data ..................................................................................................... 47 3.1. Study site ........................................................................................................................... 47 3.2. Data ................................................................................................................................... 51 3.2.1. Biodiversity data ........................................................................................................ 51 3.2.2. Remote sensing data .................................................................................................. 55 3.2.2.1. MODIS data ....................................................................................................... 55 3.2.2.2. Landsat data........................................................................................................ 56 Chapter 4: Modeling the relationship between vegetation phenology and local biodiversity of agricultural lands in Eastern Ontario using MODIS time-series data.......................................... 57 4.1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 57 4.2. Research objective and questions ..................................................................................... 61 4.3. Data ................................................................................................................................... 62 v 4.4. Methods: ..........................................................................................................................
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