Ground-cover measurements: assessing correlation among aerial and ground-based methods.

Area of Science:

• Rangeland ecology
• Remote sensing applications
• Ecological monitoring

Background:

• Public lands like Wyoming's Green Mountain Common Allotment require effective resource monitoring.
• Conventional monitoring methods are often inadequate for vast public land areas.
• There is a need for cost-effective monitoring techniques and understanding data relationships between old and new methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare conventional ground-based monitoring with remote sensing methods.
• To assess the cost-effectiveness of aerial surveys for monitoring public lands.
• To understand data-set relationships between ground and aerial monitoring techniques.

Main Methods:

• Compared two conventional methods with two remote sensing methods (ground and aerial image-based).
• Used images captured from 2m and 100m above ground level.
• Analyzed images using SamplePoint or VegMeasure software.

Main Results:

• Aerial methods increased sampling intensity at a lower cost than ground methods.
• High correlations (r=0.76-0.85) were found between ground and aerial data sets for bare ground.
• Costs for aerial imagery and ground cover measurement were under $3000 for 9000 ha.

Conclusions:

• Aerial surveys are a cost-effective rangeland monitoring method.
• Ground-to-aerial data correlations can be as strong or stronger than ground-to-ground correlations.
• Bare ground is a viable indicator for assessing rangeland health.