BG Biogeosciences BG Biogeosciences 1726-4189 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/bg-5-1809-2008 Meeting the challenge of mapping peatlands with remotely sensed data Krankina O. N. 1 Pflugmacher D. 1 Friedl M. 2 Cohen W. B. 3 Nelson P. 1 Baccini A. 2 Oregon State Univ., Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, 321 Richardson Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA Boston Univ., Department of Geography and Environment, 675 Commonwealth Ave., 4th Floor, Boston, MA 02215, USA Forestry Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, 3200 SW Jefferson Way, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA 23 12 2008 5 6 1809 1820 Copyright: © 2008 O. N. Krankina et al. 2008 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/5/1809/2008/bg-5-1809-2008.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/5/1809/2008/bg-5-1809-2008.pdf

Boreal peatlands play a major role in carbon and water cycling and other global environmental processes but understanding this role is constrained by inconsistent representation of peatlands on, or omission from, many global land cover maps. The comparison of several widely used global and continental-scale databases on peatland distribution with a detailed map for the St. Petersburg region of Russia showed significant under-reporting of peatland area, or even total omission. Analysis of the spatial agreement and disagreement with the detailed regional map indicated that the error of comission (overestimation) was significantly lower than the error of omission (underestimation) which means, that overall, peatlands were correctly classified as such in coarse resolution datasets but a large proportion (74–99%) was overlooked. The coarse map resolution alone caused significant omission of peatlands in the study region. In comparison to categorical maps, continuous field mapping approach utilizing MODIS sensor data showed potential for a greatly improved representation of peatlands on coarse resolution maps. Analysis of spectral signatures of peatlands with different types of surface vegetation suggested that improved mapping of boreal peatlands on categorical maps is feasible. The lower reflectance of treeless peatlands in the near- and shortwave-infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum is consistent with the spectral signature of sphagnum mosses. However, when trees are present, the canopy architecture appears to be more important in defining the overall spectral reflectance of peatlands. A research focus on developing remote sensing methods for boreal peatlands is needed for adequate characterization of their global distribution.

 References % vor jede Referenz Anisimov, O. A., Vaughan, D. G., Callaghan, T. V., Furgal, C., Marchant, H., Prowse, T. D., Vilhjálmsson, H., and Walsh, J. E.: Polar Regions (Arctic and Antarctic), in: Climate Change 2007, Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Parry, M. L., Canziani, O. F., Palutikof, J. P., Van der Linden, P. J., and Hanson, C. E., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 653–685, 2007. % vor jede Referenz Bartalev, S. A., Belward, A. S., Erchov, D. V., and Isaev, A. S.: A new Spot4-Vegetation Derived Land Cover Map of northern Eurasia, Int. J. Remote Sens., 24, 1977–1982, 2003. % vor jede Referenz Bartolome, E. and Belward, A. S.: GLC2000: A new approach to global land cover mapping from Earth observation data, Int. J. Remote Sens., 26, 1959–1977, 2005. % vor jede Referenz Baker, C., Lawrence, R., Montague, C., and Patten, D.: Mapping wetlands and riparian areas using landsat etm+ imagery and decision-tree-based models, Wetlands, 26, 465–474, 2006. % vor jede Referenz Beilman, D. W., Vitt, D. H., Bhatti, J. S., and Forest, S.: Peat carbon stocks in the southern Mackenzie river basin, Uncertainties revealed in a high-resolution case study, Global Change Biol., 14, 1221–1232, 2008. % vor jede Referenz Botch, M. S. and Masing, V. V.: Mire Systems in the USSR, in: Ecosystems of the World, 4B, Mire: Swamp, Bog, Fen and Moor, edited by: Gore, A. J. P., Elsevier, Amsterdam, 95–152, 1983. % vor jede Referenz Bridgham, S. D., Megonigal, J. P., Keller, J. K., Bliss, N. B., and Trettin, C.: Chapter 13, Wetlands (The First State of the Carbon Cycle Report), US Climate Change Science Program, Synthesis and Assessment Product 2.2, 2007. % vor jede Referenz Bronge, L. B. and Naslund-Landenmark, B.: Wetland classification for swedish corine land cover adopting a semi-automatic interactive approach, Can. J. Remote Sens., 28, 139–155, 2002. % vor jede Referenz Bubier, J. L., Rock, B. N., and Crill, P. M.: Spectral reflectance measurements of boreal wetland and forest mosses, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 102, 29 483–29 494, 1997. % vor jede Referenz Canty, M. J., Nielsen, A. A., and Schmidt, M.: Automatic radiometric normalization of multispectral imagery, Remote Sens. Environ., 91, 441–451, 2004. % vor jede Referenz Chander, G. and Markham, B. L.: Revised Landsat 5 TM radiometric calibration procedures and post-calibration dynamic ranges, IEEE Transact. Geosci., 41, 2674–2677, 2003. % vor jede Referenz Chavez Jr., P. S.: Image-based atmospheric corrections – revisited and improved, Photogramm. Eng. Rem. S., 62, 1025–1036, 1996. % vor jede Referenz Cohen, W. B., Maiersperger, T. K., Gower, S. T., and Turner, D. P.: An improved strategy for regression of biophysical variables and Landsat ETM+ data, Remote Sens. Environ., 84, 561–571, 2003. % vor jede Referenz Crist, E. P.: A TM tasseled cap equivalent transformation for reflectance factor data, Remote Sens. Environ., 17, 301–306, 1985. % vor jede Referenz DeFries, R. S., Hansen, M., Steininger, M., Dubayah, R., Sohlberg, R., and Townshend, J. R. G.: Subpixel forest cover in central Africa from multisensor, multitemporal data, Remote Sens. Environ., 60, 228–246, 1997. % vor jede Referenz Denman, K. L., Brasseur, G., Chidthaisong, A., Ciais, P., Cox, P. M., Dickinson, R. E., Hauglustaine, D., Heinze, C., Holland, E., Jacob, D., Lohmann, U., Ramachandran, S., da Silva Dias, P. L., Wofsy, S. C., and Zhang, X.: Couplings Between Changes in the Climate System and Biogeochemistry, in: Climate Change, The Physical Science Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Solomon, S., Qin, D., Manning, M., Chen, Z., Marquis, M., Averyt, K. B., Tignor, M., and Miller, H. L., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 2007. % vor jede Referenz Di Gregorio, A.: Land Cover Classification System, Classification Concepts and User Manual for Software (Version 2), Environment and Natural Resources Service Series, No. 8, FAO, Rome, Italy, 208 pp., 2005. % vor jede Referenz Frey, K. E. and Smith, L. C.: How well do we know northern land cover? Comparison of four global vegetation and wetland products with a new ground-truth database for West Siberia, Global Biogeochem. Cy., 21, GB1016, https://doi.org/10.1029/2006GB002706, 2007. % vor jede Referenz Friedl, M. A., McIver, D. K., Hodges, J. C. F., Zhang, X. Y., Muchoney, D., Strahler, A. H., Woodcock, C. E., Gopal, S., Schneider, A., Cooper, A., Baccini, A., Gao, F., and Schaaf, C.: Global land cover mapping from MODIS, Algorithms and early results, Remote Sens. Environ., 83, 287–302, 2002. % vor jede Referenz Frolking, S., Roulet, N., and Fuglestvedt, J: How northern peatlands influence the earth's radiative budget, Sustained methane emission versus sustained carbon sequestration, J. Geophys. Res.-Biogeosciences, 111, G01008, https://doi.org/10.1029/2005JG000091, 2006. % vor jede Referenz Gorham, E.: Northern peatlands: Role in the carbon cycle and probable responses to climatic warming, Ecol. Appl, 1, 182–195, 1991. % vor jede Referenz Häme, T., Stenberg, P., Andersson, K., Rauste, Y., Kennedy, P., Folving, S., and Sarkeala, J.: AVHRR-based forest proportion map of the Pan-European area, Remote Sens. Environ., 77, 76–91, 2001. % vor jede Referenz Hansen, J., Sato, M., Ruedy, R., Lacis, A., and Oinas, V.: Global warming in the twenty-first century, An alternative scenario, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 97, 9875–9880, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.170278997, 2000. % vor jede Referenz Hansen, M. C., Townshend, J. R. G., DeFries, R. S., and Carroll, M.: Estimation of tree cover using MODIS data at global, continental and regional/local scales, Int. J. Remote Sens., 26, 4359–4380, 2005. % vor jede Referenz Herold, M., Mayaux, P., Woodcock, C. E., Baccini, A., and Schmullius, C.: Some challenges in global land cover mapping, An assessment of agreement and accuracy in existing 1 km datasets, Earth Observations for Terrestrial Biodiversity and Ecosystems Special Issue, Rem. Sens. Environ., 112(5), 2538–2556, 2008. % vor jede Referenz Kennedy, R. E. and Cohen, W. B.: Automated designation of tie-points for image-to-image coregistration, Int. J. Remote Sens., 24, 3467–3490, 2003. % vor jede Referenz Kobak, K. I., Kondrasheva, N. Y., and Turchinovich, I. E.: Changes in carbon pools of peatland and forest in northwestern Russia during the Holocene, Global Planet. Change, 16/17, 75–84, 1998. % vor jede Referenz Krankina, O. N., Bergen, K. M., Sun, G., Masek, J. G., Shugart, H. H., Kharuk, V., Kasischke, E., Cohen, W. B., Oetter, D. R., and Duane, M. V.: Northern Eurasia, Remote sensing of boreal forests in selected regions, in: Land Change Science, Observing, Monitoring, and Understanding Trajectories of Change on the Earth's Surface, edited by: Gutman, G., Janetos, A. C., Justice, C. O., Moran, E. F., Mustard, J. F., Rindfuss, R. R., Skole, D., Turner, II, B. L., and Cochrane, M. A., Springer, Berlin, 123–138, 2004. % vor jede Referenz Kukuev, Y. A., Krankina, O. N., and Harmon, M. E.: The forest inventory system in Russia, J. Forestry, 95, 15–20, 1997. % vor jede Referenz Latifovic, R. and Olthof, I.: Accuracy assessment using sub-pixel fractional error matrices of global land cover products derived from satellite data, Remote Sens. Environ., 90, 153–165, 2004. % vor jede Referenz Li, J. H. and Chen, W. J.: A rule-based method for mapping Canada's wetlands using optical, radar and DEM data, Int. J. Remote Sens., 26, 5051–5069, 2005. % vor jede Referenz Loveland, T. R., Reed, B. C., Brown, J. F., Ohlen, D. O., Zhu, Z., Yang, L., and Merchant, J. W.: Development of a global land cover characteristics database and IGBP DISCover from 1-km AVHRR data, Int. J. Remote Sens., 21, 1303–1330, 2000. % vor jede Referenz Lehner, B. and Doll, P.: Development and validation of global databases of lakes, reservoirs and wetlands, J. Hydrol., 296, 1–22, 2004. % vor jede Referenz Malmberg, U.: BALANS land cover and land use classification methodology, Environmental Climate Programme, Novosat Oy, BALANS report Balans-utv-24 2.0, Stockholm, 2001. % vor jede Referenz Markon, C. J. and Derksen, D. V.: Indentification of tundra land-cover near Teshekpuk Lake, Alaska using spot satellite data, Arctic, 47, 222–231, 1994. % vor jede Referenz McGovern, E. A., Holden, N. M., Ward, S. M., and Collins, J. F.: Remotely sensed satellite imagery as an information source for industrial peatlands management, Resour. Conserv. Recycl., 28, 67–83, 2000. % vor jede Referenz McGuire, A. D., Wirth, C., Apps, M., Beringer, J., Clein, J., Epstein, H., Kicklighter, D. W., Bhatti, J., Chapin, III, F. S., de Groot, B., Efremov, D., Eugster, W., Fukuda, M., Gower, T., Hinzman, L., Huntley, B., Jia, G. J., Kasischke, E., Melillo, J., Romanovsky, V., Shvidenko, A., Vaganov, E., and Walker, D.: Environmental variation, vegetation distribution, carbon dynamics and water/energy exchange at high latitudes, J. Veg. Sci., 13, 301–314, 2002. % vor jede Referenz McGuire, A. D., Chapin, F. S. III, Wirth, C., Apps, M., Bhatti, J., Callaghan, T., Christensen, T. R., Clein, J. S., Fukuda, M., Maximov, T., Onuchin, A., Shvidenko, A., and Vaganov, E.: Responses of high latitude ecosystems to global change, Potential consequences for the climate system, in: Terrestrial Ecosystems in a Changing World, edited by: Canadell J. G., Pataki, D. E., and Pitelka, L. F., 297–310, The IGBP Series, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 2007. % vor jede Referenz Matthews, E.: Global data bases on distribution, characteristics and methane emission of natural wetlands, Documentation of archived data tape, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA, NASA Technical Memorandum, 4153, 1989. % vor jede Referenz Matthews, E. and Fung, I.: Methane emission from natural wetlands, Global distribution, area, and environmental characteristics of sources, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 1, 61–86, 1987. % vor jede Referenz Oetter, D. R., Krankina, O. N., Cohen, W. B., and Majersperger, T. K.: Using landsat thematic mapper data to map land cover and biomass in a Russian forest for regional carbon storage inventory, Global Change Open Science Conference, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 10–13 July, 2001. % vor jede Referenz Pflugmacher, D., Krankina, O. N., and Cohen, W. B.: Satellite-based peatland mapping, Potential of the MODIS sensor, Global Planet. Change, 56, 248–257, 2007. % vor jede Referenz Pastor, J., Solin, J., Bridgham, S. D., Updegraff, K., Harth, C., Weishampel, P., and Dewey, B.: Global warming and the export of dissolved organic carbon from boreal peatlands, Oikos, 100, 380–386, https://doi.org/10.1034/j.1600-0706.2003.11774.x, 2003. % vor jede Referenz Poulin, M., Careau, D., Rochefort, L., and Desrochers, A.: From Satellite Imagery to Peatland Vegetation Diversity: How Reliable Are Habitat Maps?, Cons. Ecol., 6(2), 16, http://www.consecol.org/vol6/iss2/art16, 2002. % vor jede Referenz Prigent, C., Papa, F., Aires, F., Rossow, W. B., and Matthews, E.: Global inundation dynamics inferred from multiple satellite observations, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D12107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2006JD007847, 2007. % vor jede Referenz Rosenqvist, A., Finlayson, C. M., Lowry, J., and Taylor, D.: The potential of long-wavelength satellite-borne radar to support implementation of the Ramsar Wetlands Convention, Aquat. Conserv., 17, 229–244, 2007. % vor jede Referenz Roulet, N. T.: Peatlands, carbon storage, greenhouse gases, and the Kyoto Protocol, prospects and significance for Canada, Wetlands, 20, 605–615, 2000. % vor jede Referenz Rydin, H. and Jeglum, J.: The biology of peatlands, Oxford University Press Inc., New York, US, 343 pp., 2006. % vor jede Referenz Schaaf, C. B., Gao, F., Strahler, A. H., Lucht, W., Li, X., Tsang, T., Strugnell, N. C., Zhang, X., Jin, Y., Muller, J.-P., Lewis, P., Barnsley, M., Hobson, P., Disney, M., Roberts, G., Dunderdale, M., Doll, C., d'Entremont, R. P., Hu, B., Liang, S., Pivette, J. L., Roy, D. P.: First operational BRDF, albedo nadir reflectance products from MODIS, Remote Sens. Environ., 83, 135–148, 2002. % vor jede Referenz Sheng, Y., Smith, L. C., MacDonald, G. M., Kremenetski, K. V., Frey, K. E., Velichko, A. A., Lee, M., Beilman, D. W., and Dubinin, P.: A high resolution GIS-based inventory of the West Siberian peat carbon pool, Global Biogeochem. Cy., 18, GB3004, https://doi.org/10.1029/2003GB002190, 2004. % vor jede Referenz Smith, L. C., MacDonald, G. M., Velichko, A. A., Beilman, D. W., Borisova, O. K., Frey, K. E., Kremenetski, K. V., and Sheng, Y.: Siberian peatlands a net carbon sink and global methane source since the Early Holocene, Science, 303, 353–356, 2004. % vor jede Referenz Snyder, J. P.: Map Projections: A Working Manual, in: Washington, D.C., edited by: U.S.G. Survey, United States Geological Survey, 1987. % vor jede Referenz Sonnentag, O., Chen, J. M., Roberts, D. A., Talbot, J., Halligan, K. Q., and Govind, A.: Mapping tree and shrub leaf area indices in an ombrotrophic peatland through multiple endmember spectral unmixing, Remote Sens. Environ., 109, 342–360, 2007. % vor jede Referenz Sturm, M., Racine, C., and Tape, K.: Increasing shrub abundance in the Arctic, Nature, 411, 546–547, 2001. % vor jede Referenz Turner, D. P., Cohen, W. B., and Kennedy, R. E.: Alternative spatial resolutions and estimation of carbon flux over a managed forest landscape in western Oregon, Landscape Ecol., 15, 441–452, 2000. % vor jede Referenz Vogelmann, J. E. and Moss, D. M.: Spectral reflectance measurements in the Genus Sphagnum, Remote Sens. Environ., 45(3), 273–279, 1993.