Graduation Date
Summer 2024
Document Type
Thesis
Program
Master of Science degree with a major in Natural Resources: option Environmental Science and Management
Committee Chair Name
James Graham
Committee Chair Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Second Committee Member Name
Kerry Byrne
Second Committee Member Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Third Committee Member Name
Rosemary Sherriff
Third Committee Member Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Fourth Committee Member Name
David Gwenzi
Fourth Committee Member Affiliation
Community Member or Outside Professional
Keywords
Puerto Rico, The U.S. Virgin Islands, Tropical forests, Drought
Subject Categories
Environmental Science and Management
Abstract
The health and overall resilience of tropical forest ecosystems are closely tied to the timing of phenological events. One must consider how forests react to significant climate anomalies to forecast the possible effects of climate change. This research study utilized U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) plot-level data and Landsat satellite data together to determine if these datasets are valuable techniques to understand the impacts of the 2015-2016 drought on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (PRVI). I did remote sensing analysis on PRVI to produce repaired and near cloud-free satellite imagery, producing dozens of phenometrics of all the Islands. The FIA data estimated the mortality of saplings and trees on PRVI and gave an understanding of the change of aboveground live biomass over multiple time windows. Multivariate Canonical Correlation Analysis was utilized to explore the relationship between the two sets of data, one being the FIA biological data and one being spectral index phenometrics data. One of the main conclusions from the study is that the relationship between phenometrics and field-collected FIA data did not have a negative relationship during the drought window, as expected. The longer-term pre-drought time window of 2005-2009 showed greater susceptibility to sapling and tree mortality and more significant net change in aboveground live biomass than the shorter-term 2010-2014 and drought 2015–2016-time windows, possibly due to the younger forests of the earlier period. The study also determined that humid forest patches were more susceptible to mortality. The results of this study give insight into how drought impacts younger tropical forests. With most of the literature focused on older tropical forests with more complex forest communities, this research helps fill gaps in how younger tropical forests will react to drought and other climate anomalies.
Citation Style
APA
Recommended Citation
Fleming, Sean, "Satellite-based phenology and climate anomaly analysis in evaluating the response of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands tropical forests to the 2015-2016 drought" (2024). Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects. 787.
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/787