Background

The Santa Rita Experimental Range (SRER) and Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW) are two long term ecological and earth science research sites located near Tucson Arizona and managed by the University of Arizona and United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), respectively. The SRER is the future location of a National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Core Site and will soon be monitored continuously for eddy covariance data as well as hyperspectral and aerial LiDAR remote sensing from the NEON Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) on an annual basis. The potential to characterize multi-temporal; landscape and ecosystem process at very fine resolutions is a unique opportunity for both the SRER and WGEW by leveraging the availability of the NEON AOP.

Before the NEON program takes off there are five tasks that need to be accomplished:

1) Review techniques for characterizing bare earth from LiDAR and segmenting vegetation at an individual scale to ensure that they can be monitored by the AOP.

2) Map large woody vegetation on both the SRER and WGEW with the available LiDAR data (Pima County Association of Governments and USGS).

3) Develop a method to scale from individual perennial midgrass plants to NEON AOP data at one meter resolution using a combination of ground based terrestrial laser scanning and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) LiDAR and Structure from Motion (SfM) imagery.

4) Assess the ability of UAVs to use SfM and LiDAR to monitor both forage production and utilization (consumption) at a pasture scale (10³ ha^-1).

5) Contract for a consistent classification on both the SRER and WGEW the vegetation states appropriate for the MLRA 41 ecological site state and transition models. 

With these data, we anticipate being able to better predict ecosystem function (aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP), animal weight gain, and ecological states within pastures for both study areas.

Location of Study Areas