Remote Sensing of Plant Biodiversity Jeannine Cavender-Bares John A. Gamon Philip A. Townsend Editors Remote Sensing of Plant Biodiversity Jeannine Cavender-Bares • John A. Gamon Philip A. Townsend Editors Remote Sensing of Plant Biodiversity ISBN 978-3-030-33156-6 ISBN 978-3-030-33157-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33157-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover artwork was designed by Daniel Tschanz. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Editors Jeannine Cavender-Bares Ecology, Evolution & Behavior University of Minnesota Saint Paul, MN, USA Philip A. Townsend Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison, WI, USA John A. Gamon University of Nebraska–Lincoln, School of Natural Resources Lincoln, NE, USA University of Alberta, Departments of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences and Biological Sciences Edmonton, AB, Canada v Foreword At last, here it is. For some time now, the world has needed a text providing both a new theoretical foundation and practical guidance on how to approach the challenge of biodiversity decline in the Anthropocene. This is a global challenge demanding global approaches to understand its scope and implications. Until recently, we have simply lacked the tools to do so. We are now entering an era in which we can real- istically begin to understand and monitor the multidimensional phenomenon of bio- diversity at a planetary scale. This era builds upon three centuries of scientific research on biodiversity at site to landscape levels, augmented over the past two decades by airborne research platforms carrying spectrometers, lidars, and radars for larger-scale observations. Emerging international networks of fine-grain in-situ biodiversity observations complemented by space-based sensors offering coarser- grain imagery—but global coverage—of ecosystem composition, function, and structure together provide the information necessary to monitor and track change in biodiversity globally. This book is a road map on how to observe and interpret terrestrial biodiversity across scales through plants—primary producers and the foundation of the trophic pyramid. It honors the fact that biodiversity exists across different dimensions, including both phylogenetic and functional. Then, it relates these aspects of biodi- versity to another dimension, the spectral diversity captured by remote sensing instruments operating at scales from leaf to canopy to biome. The biodiversity com- munity has needed a Rosetta Stone to translate between the language of satellite remote sensing and its resulting spectral diversity and the languages of those explor- ing the phylogenetic diversity and functional trait diversity of life on Earth. By assembling the vital translation, this volume has globalized our ability to track bio- diversity state and change. Thus, a global problem meets a key component of the global solution. The editors have cleverly built the book in three parts. Part 1 addresses the theory behind the remote sensing of terrestrial plant biodiversity: why spectral diversity relates to plant functional traits and phylogenetic diversity. Starting with first prin- ciples, it connects plant biochemistry, physiology, and macroecology to remotely vi sensed spectra and explores the processes behind the patterns we observe. Examples from the field demonstrate the rising synthesis of multiple disciplines to create a new cross-spatial and spectral science of biodiversity. Part 2 discusses how to implement this evolving science. It focuses on the pleth- ora of novel in-situ, airborne, and spaceborne Earth observation tools currently and soon to be available while also incorporating the ways of actually making biodiver- sity measurements with these tools. It includes instructions for organizing and con- ducting a field campaign. Throughout, there is a focus on the burgeoning field of imaging spectroscopy, which is revolutionizing our ability to characterize life remotely. Part 3 takes on an overarching issue for any effort to globalize biodiversity obser- vations, the issue of scale. It addresses scale from two perspectives. The first is that of combining observations across varying spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions for better understanding—that is, what scales and how. This is an area of ongoing research driven by a confluence of innovations in observation systems and rising computational capacity. The second is the organizational side of the scaling chal- lenge. It explores existing frameworks for integrating multi-scale observations within global networks. The focus here is on what practical steps can be taken to organize multi-scale data and what is already happening in this regard. These frame- works include essential biodiversity variables and the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON). This book constitutes an end-to-end guide uniting the latest in research and tech- niques to cover the theory and practice of the remote sensing of plant biodiversity. In putting it together, the editors and their coauthors, all preeminent in their fields, have done a great service for those seeking to understand and conserve life on Earth—just when we need it most. For if the world is ever to construct a coordi- nated response to the planetwide crisis of biodiversity loss, it must first assemble adequate—and global—measures of what we are losing. Woody Turner Earth Science Division NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, USA Foreword vii Contents 1 The Use of Remote Sensing to Enhance Biodiversity Monitoring and Detection: A Critical Challenge for the Twenty-First Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Jeannine Cavender-Bares, John A. Gamon, and Philip A. Townsend 2 Applying Remote Sensing to Biodiversity Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Anna K. Schweiger, Jesús N. Pinto-Ledezma, and Jose Eduardo Meireles 3 Scaling Functional Traits from Leaves to Canopies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Shawn P. Serbin and Philip A. Townsend 4 The Laegeren Site: An Augmented Forest Laboratory . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Felix Morsdorf, Fabian D. Schneider, Carla Gullien, Daniel Kükenbrink, Reik Leiterer, and Michael E. Schaepman 5 Lessons Learned from Spectranomics: Wet Tropical Forests . . . . . . . 105 Roberta E. Martin 6 Remote Sensing for Early, Detailed, and Accurate Detection of Forest Disturbance and Decline for Protection of Biodiversity . . . 121 Jennifer Pontius, Paul Schaberg, and Ryan Hanavan 7 Linking Leaf Spectra to the Plant Tree of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 José Eduardo Meireles, Brian O’Meara, and Jeannine Cavender-Bares 8 Linking Foliar Traits to Belowground Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Michael Madritch, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Sarah E. Hobbie, and Philip A. Townsend 9 Using Remote Sensing for Modeling and Monitoring Species Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Jesús N. Pinto-Ledezma and Jeannine Cavender-Bares viii 10 Remote Sensing of Geodiversity as a Link to Biodiversity . . . . . . . . . 225 Sydne Record, Kyla M. Dahlin, Phoebe L. Zarnetske, Quentin D. Read, Sparkle L. Malone, Keith D. Gaddis, John M. Grady, Jennifer Costanza, Martina L. Hobi, Andrew M. Latimer, Stephanie Pau, Adam M. Wilson, Scott V. Ollinger, Andrew O. Finley, and Erin Hestir 11 Predicting Patterns of Plant Diversity and Endemism in the Tropics Using Remote Sensing Data: A Study Case from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Andrea Paz, Marcelo Reginato, Fabián A. Michelangeli, Renato Goldenberg, Mayara K. Caddah, Julián Aguirre-Santoro, Miriam Kaehler, Lúcia G. Lohmann, and Ana Carnaval 12 Remote Detection of Invasive Alien Species . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Erik A. Bolch, Maria J. Santos, Christiana Ade, Shruti Khanna, Nicholas T. Basinger, Martin O. Reader, and Erin L. Hestir 13 A Range of Earth Observation Techniques for Assessing Plant Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 Angela Lausch, Marco Heurich, Paul Magdon, Duccio Rocchini, Karsten Schulz, Jan Bumberger, and Doug J. King 14 How the Optical Properties of Leaves Modify the Absorption and Scattering of Energy and Enhance Leaf Functionality . . . . . . . . 349 Susan L. Ustin and Stéphane Jacquemoud 15 Spectral Field Campaigns: Planning and Data Collection . . . . . . . . . 385 Anna K. Schweiger 16 Consideration of Scale in Remote Sensing of Biodiversity . . . . . . . . . 425 John A. Gamon, Ran Wang, Hamed Gholizadeh, Brian Zutta, Phil A. Townsend, and Jeannine Cavender-Bares 17 Integrating Biodiversity, Remote Sensing, and Auxiliary Information for the Study of Ecosystem Functioning and Conservation at Large Spatial Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 Franziska Schrodt, Betsabe de la Barreda Bautista, Christopher Williams, Doreen S. Boyd, Gabriela Schaepman-Strub, and Maria J. Santos 18 Essential Biodiversity Variables: Integrating In-Situ Observations and Remote Sensing Through Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485 Néstor Fernández, Simon Ferrier, Laetitia M. Navarro, and Henrique M. Pereira Contents ix 19 Prospects and Pitfalls for Spectroscopic Remote Sensing of Biodiversity at the Global Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503 David Schimel, Philip A. Townsend, and Ryan Pavlick 20 Epilogue: Toward a Global Biodiversity Monitoring System . . . . . . . 519 Gary N. Geller, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, John A. Gamon, Kyle McDonald, Erika Podest, Phil A. Townsend, and Susan Ustin Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567 Contents xi About the Authors Christiana Ade is a PhD student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California Merced. She is passionate about using remote sensing to study changes in wetland vegetation diversity and water quality, and evaluate how these changes may impact key Earth system cycles. Julián Aguirre-Santoro is an Assistant Professor at the Natural Sciences Institute of the National University of Colombia. His research focuses on taxonomy, phylo- genetics, biogeography, and macroevolution of Neotropical plant lineages. Doreen Boyd is a Professor in the School of Geography, University of Nottingham, UK. Her research focuses include active and passive remote sensing, ecology and conservation, and human rights intersections with environmental change. Betsabe de la Barreda-Bautista is a research associate at the School of Geography, University of Nottingham (UK), working on remote sensing for environmental- human dynamics, principally monitoring how vegetation responds to climatological and anthropogenic events. Nicholas Basinger is an Assistant Professor of Weed Science at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on weed ecology, biology, and diversification of the agroecosystem and non-cropland ecosystems to reduce the impacts of weedy species. Erik Bolch is a Master’s student in Environmental Systems at the University of California Merced. His research focuses utilizing UAS imaging spectroscopy to study biodiversity and invasive plants. Jan Bumberger heads the working group “Environmental Sensor and Information Systems” and is the scientific coordinator for research data management at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Germany. His research xii focuses on scalable sensor network technologies as well as the calibration and vali- dation of remote sensing data with broadband electromagnetic and optical spectral methods. Ana Carnaval was born and raised in Brazil. She received her Master’s degree in Zoology from the Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro and has a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from The University of Chicago. She is an Associate Professor at the City College of CUNY, and her research focuses on the historical biogeography of the Atlantic forest fauna and flora. Jeannine Cavender-Bares is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on the ecology and evolution of plant function, applying phy- logenetics and spectral data to community ecology, and remote sensing of biodiversity. Jennifer Costanza is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on forest dynamics, the ecological effects of global change, land change modeling, and disturbance ecology. Kyla Dahlin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences and the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior Program at Michigan State University. Her research aims to better under- stand and quantify ecosystem processes and disturbance responses through the application of emerging technologies, including air- and spaceborne remote sens- ing, spatial statistics, and process-based modeling. Néstor Fernández is a conservation biology researcher interested in the advance- ment of biodiversity conservation solutions through the integration of multiple sources of earth observations in order to quantify and model changes in terrestrial ecosystem dynamics and in species distributions. Andrew O. Finley is a Professor at the Departments of Forestry and Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences at Michigan State University. His research inter- ests lie in developing methodologies for monitoring and modeling environmental processes, Bayesian statistics, spatial statistics, and statistical computing. Keith Gaddis is the Senior Support Scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Biological Diversity and Ecological Forecasting Programs. He is an ecologist and biogeographer by training with expertise using remote sens- ing and genetics to address questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. About the Authors xiii John Gamon is a Professor in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta, and also conducts airborne remote sensing research in vegetation biodiversity and productivity at the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. His interests include ecophysiol- ogy, ecosystem metabolism, biodiversity, ecoinformatics, and sustainability. Gary Geller has a PhD in Biology from UCLA where he studied the interaction of plants with their environment, focusing on modeling plant architecture. At NASA/ JPL he combines that experience with system engineering and has worked with the NASA Ecological Forecasting program for the last 15 years, including two years seconded to the Group on Earth Observations in Geneva. Hamed Gholizadeh is an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department at Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on using proximal, airborne, and spaceborne remote sensing to study biodiversity. Renato Goldenberg is a Full Professor in the Department of Botany at Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil. His research focuses on systematics of flowering plants. John Grady was a postdoctoral fellow at Michigan State University and Bryn Mawr College at the time of writing this chapter and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Great Rivers Research and Educational Center. He is broadly inter- ested in how traits affect interactions and emergent features of ecology. Ryan P. Hanavan is a Research Entomologist and the Remote Sensing Program Manager with the Forest Health Assessment and Applied Sciences Team with the US Forest Service. His research focuses on early detection remote sensing tech- niques for insect and disease threats. Erin Hestir is an Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California Merced. Her research focuses on aquatic ecosystems under threat from competing pressures to meet societal needs for water and food security while sustaining biodiversity and other ecosystem services. Marco Heurich is Head of the Department of Visitor Management and National Park Monitoring of Bavarian Forest National Park and Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Freiburg. His research focuses on exploring movement ecology and biodiversity by using a variety of remote sensing techniques from camera traps to satellites. Martina Hobi is a Group Leader in the Forest Resources and Management Research Unit at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research WSL. She specializes in the analysis of forest dynamical processes using a combination of terrestrial, dendroecological, and remote sensing data. About the Authors xiv Sarah Hobbie is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. She studies global change impacts on ecosystems, urban ecosystem ecology, and human impacts on urban water resources. Stéphane Jacquemoud is a Professor of Remote Sensing in the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris at the University of Paris. His research focuses include remote sensing of natural surfaces, leaf and soil radiative transfer models, and imag- ing spectroscopy. Miriam Kaehler has worked as a visiting scholar at the Institute of Systematic Botany at the New York Botanical Garden, and as a post-doc research fellow at Universidade de São Paulo and Universidade Federal do Paraná, both in Brazil. Her research focuses on molecular systematics and taxonomy of Bignoniaceae, as well as plant inventory. Shruti Khanna is a Senior Environmental Scientist at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Her research focuses on understanding invasion ecology of nonnative plants through remote sensing. Doug King is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His research focuses on high-resolution UAV to satellite scale imaging for vegetation composi- tion, structure, productivity and health modeling, mapping, and monitoring in for- est, wetland, agriculture, and tundra environments. Mayara Krasinski Caddah is a Professor in the Department of Botany at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Her research focuses on plant taxon- omy and evolution, applying phylogenetics and population genetics to genera and species delimitation. Daniel Kükenbrink is a PhD candidate at the Remote Sensing Laboratories of the University of Zurich. Three-dimensional forest reconstruction and the radiative transfer in forest ecosystems are among his main research interests. Andrew Latimer is a Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California Davis. He studies how plant populations and communities respond to change, including sudden, major disturbance such as fire and drought, as well as more gradual changes in climate. Angela Lausch is head of the working group functional landscape ecology and Remote Sensing at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, and Privat Dozent (PD) at the Humboldt University to Berlin. She uses hyperspectral remote sensing on airborne, drone, and laboratory platforms at the UFZ. Her research focuses on remote sensing, trait and functional ecology, bio- and geodiver- sity, data science, linked open data, and the semantic web. About the Authors xv Reik Leiterer is a Senior Scientist at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His aim is to enable more robust and operational environmental monitoring using data- driven methods. Lúcia Lohmann is a Professor in the Department of Botany at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her research is highly integrative, combining components of classic taxonomy, phylogenetics, molecular biology, ecology, evolution, and bioge- ography to address questions associated with the assembly and evolution of the Neotropical biota. Mike Madritch is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Appalachian State University. His research focuses on linking aboveground plant communities with belowground microbial communities and ecosystem functioning. Paul Magdon is a Senior Scientist at the Chair of Forest Inventory and Remote Sensing at the University of Göttingen, Germany. In his research he addresses meth- odological questions, relevant for the development of remote sensing–assisted for- est and biodiversity monitoring systems. Sparkle Malone is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University. Her primary research focus is to improve our understanding of how climate and disturbance regimes influence spatial and tempo- ral variability in ecosystem structure and function using remote sensing, eddy cova- riance, and spatial and temporal models. Roberta Martin is an Associate Professor in the School for Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and the Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science at the Arizona State University. Her research incorporates field and laboratory stud- ies of trees and corals with aircraft- and satellite-based maps to understand the bio- diversity and health of forests and reefs. Kyle C. McDonald is Terry Elkes Professor in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the City College of New York, City University of New York. Professor McDonald studies terrestrial ecosystems with satellite-borne remote sensing instruments. Jose Eduardo Meireles is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine. His research focuses on plant phylogenetics, population genetics, and evolutionary ecology. Fabián A. Michelangeli is a Curator in the Institute of Systematic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden. His research focuses on tropical plant taxonomy, sys- tematics, and their evolution. About the Authors xvi Felix Morsdorf is a Group Leader in the Geography Department at the University of Zurich. He uses laser scanners, drones, and physical modeling to derive diversity- related metrics of vegetation structure. Scott Ollinger is a Professor in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of New Hampshire. His research interests span a variety of topics within the fields of ecology and biogeochemistry including carbon and nitrogen cycling, forest productivity and succession, plant-soil interactions, remote sensing, ecosystem modeling, and the effects of multiple environmental stressors on forests. Brian O’Meara studies macroevolution by developing and applying phylogenetic models. He is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Stephanie Pau is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Florida State University. Her research focuses on the diversity, structure, and func- tion of forest and savanna systems, often combining field surveys with remote sens- ing imagery and statistical modeling. Ryan Pavlick is a Research Technologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology; working on observing and understanding Earth’s biodiversity, terrestrial ecosystems and carbon cycle from space. Andrea Paz has an MSc in Biology and is a PhD candidate at the City University of New York, USA. She is interested in understanding the influence of environments in determining species distributions and diversity patterns in the Neotropics. Henrique Miguel Pereira is a Professor of Biodiversity Conservation at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) at the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the co-chair of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network. His research uses a combination of field work, long-term monitoring, and modeling to understand the drivers of global biodiversity change. Jesús N. Pinto-Ledezma is a Grand Challenge in Biology Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. He works with both macroecological and evolutionary theory and methods with the aim of understanding the processes that underlie biodiversity patterns at different temporal and spatial scales. Erika Podest is a scientist with the Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Her research focuses on the use of microwave remote sensing for characterizing wetland inundation dynam- ics and vegetation growing season length in the northern high latitudes. About the Authors xvii Jennifer Pontius is a Research Ecologist with the US Forest Service and Director of the Environmental Science Program at the University of Vermont. Her research focuses on developing novel remote sensing methods to assess forest health, struc- ture, and productivity to better inform the management of forested ecosystems. Quentin Read was a postdoctoral fellow at Michigan State University and Bryn Mawr College at the time of writing this chapter and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Socio-Ecological Synthesis Center. A community ecologist by train- ing, he is now working on quantifying the environmental and ecological impacts of food waste in the United States. Martin Reader is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich. He is examining the impacts of human modification on river delta biodi- versity and ecosystem services. Sydne Record is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Bryn Mawr College. Her research focuses on modeling the past, present, and future states of the natural world to better understand the services that ecosystems afford to society. Marcelo Reginato is a Professor in the Department of Botany at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. His research focuses include plant systemat- ics, biogeography, and macroevolution. Duccio Rocchini is Professor in Biology and Ecology at the University of Trento, Italy. His research focuses on biodiversity analysis at multiple spatial scales, eco- logical informatics, plant community ecology, remote sensing, spatial ecology, spatio-ecological modeling by open-source software, and species distribution modeling. Maria J. Santos is a Professor of Earth System Science in the Department of Geography, University of Zurich. Her research focuses on understanding coupled social-ecological systems and their impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, using field, archival, and remote sensing data, GIS, and statistical modeling. Michael E. Schaepman is a Professor of Remote Sensing and Vice President of Research at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Following a focus on optical engineering and designing imaging spectrometers, he moved on to signal process- ing and radiative transfer modeling and is currently working on remotely sensing ecological genomics. Gabriela Schaepman-Strub is a Professor of Earth System Science in the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her research focuses on radiation-vegetation interaction from leaf to canopy scale, Arctic biodiversity and ecosystem functions, and land surface energy fluxes under climate change. About the Authors xviii David Schimel is a Senior Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology; leading research focused on interactions between climate and ecosystems, combining models and observations. His team is working on satellite missions that involve spectroscopic detection of carbon cycle dynamics and biodiversity on Earth. Fabian Schneider is a postdoc at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. His research interests lie in remote sensing of plant func- tional traits, biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning to improve our understanding of the interactions between plant communities and global change. Franziska Schrodt is an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography, University of Nottingham (UK). She combines ecological data on (functional, phylogenetic, and taxonomic) biodiversity and geodiversity with novel data sources (e.g., remotely sensed) and analysis techniques (e.g., machine learning) to further develop our understanding of ecosystem dynamics and potential impacts on human well-being. Karsten Schulz is Professor of Hydrology and Integrated Water Management at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Austria. By integrat- ing information from various remote sensing platforms, his research aims to improve the prediction and understanding of water, energy, and solute fluxes in the soil- plant-atmosphere continuum at different spatial scales. Anna K. Schweiger is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institut de recherche en biologie végétale, Université de Montréal. Anna is currently particularly interested in developing theory and methods for using spectra of plants and spectral diversity of landscapes to study plant community composition and the ecosystem benefits of biodiversity. Shawn P. Serbin is a Scientist in the Environmental and Climate Sciences Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York. Shawn’s research aims to improve the understanding of the processes driving the fluxes and pools of carbon, water, and energy in terrestrial ecosystems and utilizes a range of tools including remote sensing to develop novel scaling methods and model-data synthesis approaches. Philip Townsend is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research focuses include physiological remote sensing, imaging spectroscopy, forest ecosystem ecol- ogy, and watershed hydrology. Woody Turner has spent a career promoting the use of satellite imagery to answer questions about the distribution and abundance of life on Earth and providing natu- ral resource managers with remote sensing solutions to their day-to-day challenges. About the Authors xix Susan Ustin is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at the University of California Davis. Her research focuses include remote sensing of plant functional properties, ecosystem processes, imaging spec- troscopy, and mapping of plant species and biodiversity. Ran Wang is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, and visiting scientist at University of Alberta, where he received his PhD. He uses proximal, airborne, and satellite remote sensing to study vegetation biodi- versity and productivity. Chris Williams is the Geospatial Analysis Lead at the British Geological Survey. His background is in glaciology, terrain and environmental data analysis, and geo- environmental product development. Adam Wilson is an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department and the Department of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo. His research investigates the spatial patterns and processes of biodiversity and ecosys- tem function using remote sensing and field observations together with mechanistic and statistical modeling to understand how ecosystems change through space and time. Phoebe Zarnetske is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at Michigan State University. Her research uses a combination of observa- tional data, experiments, and modeling to connect observed patterns of biodiversity and community composition with underlying mechanisms. Brian Zutta is a researcher at Universidad Alas Peruanas and an assistant project scientist at the University of California Los Angeles. He recently coordinated the development of the national measurement, reporting and verification and forest monitoring system for the National Forest Conservation Program (PNCB) of the Ministry of the Environment (MINAM) in Lima, Peru. About the Authors xxi About the Editors Jeannine Cavender-Bares is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. She earned a Master’s at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a PhD in Biology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the ecology and evolution of plant function, apply- ing phylogenetics and spectral data to community ecology, and remote sensing of biodiversity. She is committed to advancing international efforts for global monitoring and assessment of biodiversity and ecosys- tem services to aid management efforts towards sustainability. John A. Gamon is a Professor in the Departments of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta. He also conducts research in Quantitative Remote Sensing at the Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies (CALMIT) in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He earned his Master’s and his PhD in Botany at the University of California, Davis, and did his postdoc- toral research on Remote Sensing and Ecophysiology at the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, CA. His research focuses include photosynthesis, ecosystem function, productivity, biodiversity, ecoinformatics, and sustainability. xxii Philip A. Townsend is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He earned his PhD in Geography at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His research focuses include physiologi- cal remote sensing, imaging spectroscopy, ecosystem ecology, and watershed hydrology. About the Editors