Estimating aboveground herbaceous plant biomass via proxies: The confounding effects of sampling year and precipitation |
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| Institution: | 1. MTA Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Alkotmány 2-4, H-2163 Vácrátót, Hungary;2. Corvinus University of Budapest, Department of Botany, Ménesi 44, H-1118 Budapest, Hungary;3. MTA Centre for Ecological Research, GINOP Sustainable Ecosystems Group, 8237 Tihany, Klebelsberg Kuno u. 3, Hungary;1. Key Lab on Biosafety of National Environmental Protection. Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, MEP, Nanjing 210042, China;2. Department of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China;3. Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences/Nation Key Facility for Crop Resources and Genetic Imporvement, Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Triticeae Crops, Ministry of Agriclture, Beijing 100081, China;1. INALI, UNL, CONICET, Paraje El Pozo, Ciudad Universitaria UNL, 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina;2. FHUC, UNL, Paraje El Pozo, Ciudad Universitaria UNL, 3000 Santa Fe, Argentina;1. Institute of Grassland Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hohhot 010010, P.R.China;2. Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Center (SPARC), Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Swift Current S9H 3X2, Canada;1. Eawag, Department of Aquatic Ecology, Überlandstrasse 133, CH-8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland;2. University of Zurich, Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland;3. University of Toronto, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 25 Wilcocks Street, M5S 3B2 Toronto, ON, Canada;1. Institute of Loess Plateau, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, Shanxi 030006, China;2. Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha, Hunan 410125, China;3. Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA |
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| Abstract: | Direct measurements of aboveground plant biomass are often not feasible, thus various biomass proxies are in use. To obtain biomass estimates, these proxies are calibrated against actual biomass, and the resulting proxy-biomass relationship is often used across multiple years and experimental treatments within a study. We investigated how the proxy-biomass relationship varied across years and considered interannual precipitation variability as a contributing factor.We sampled a perennial grassland for ten consecutive years (2003–2012) in central Hungary and estimated vegetation cover and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI); two frequently used biomass proxies representing two contrasting methods. Aboveground live herbaceous plant biomass was harvested from each plot after sampling, and regression models were used to assess the relationship between biomass proxies and actual aboveground biomass.We found that cover and NDVI were equally effective at estimating biomass. However, the relationship between either biomass proxy and actual biomass varied amongst years, and this was related to the amount of precipitation. In wetter years, proxy-biomass relationships were steeper than in drier years.These results indicate that using the same proxy-biomass relationship across different years or precipitation regimes may not be valid and may introduce systematic error into biomass estimations in long-term studies or precipitation manipulation experiments. |
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| Keywords: | Aboveground plant biomass Field spectroscopy Interannual validity Long-term studies NDVI Precipitation Proxy-biomass relationship Visual cover estimation |
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