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Interpreting NDVI values - proxy to species richness?


samrae

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Hi there

I am working with an NDVI image and was hoping to correlate the NDVI values with plant species richness, as there have been a number of studies that have used NDVI to predict species richness.

However, in the various habitats I get different values:

Forest* - medium values

Pine plantation - medium values

Riverine - high values

Tea plantation - highest values

*The forest areas are of old growth forest which should have the highest levels of biodiversity. But instead the riverine areas (and tea plantation) has higher values. I assume this is as NDVI is more closely correlated to new, live vegetaion (which emits more chorophyll).

I was just wondering if I there would be any correlation to the species richness in this case then? And if there are other aspects, or insights that I may be missing...

Thanks in advance!

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Hi, thanks for the responses:

@yousef2233: Thank you, for your suggestion but unfortunately at this time I dont have time to apply more methodological analysis. At this stage I would like to try to understand and explain the relationship of species richness - NDVI correlation (if it exists) at a conceptual level for my results. Or how what the NDVI values indicate about the different land cover classes?

@3dbu: It was actually a very simple application using the NDVI function in ERDAS Imagine. There were actually some software problems with the band combinations, which the forum was really great about providing advice about (see http://www.gisarea.com/index.php?/topic/2577-ndvi-values-from-spot-imagery/)

I should probably explain that this NDVI section fits as a small component to a larger thesis where I have looked at land cover change (hence the land cover classes above) and also indigenous knowledge in the area.

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