Characterizing Vegetation Metrics Across Multiple Habitats and Spatial Scales at Daring Lake, NT

Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is used to monitor vegetation dynamics and infer changes in productivity and carbon fluxes globally and in particular, in the Arctic, where remote sensing helps overcome lack of access in remote regions. This study examined how ground-based NDVI related to vegetation metrics, notably leaf area index (LAI) and percent vascular vegetation cover, across three tundra vegetation communities and across multiple measurement resolutions at Daring Lake, NT, in Canada’s Southern Arctic. Results demonstrated that LAI and percent vascular vegetation cover strongly correlated with NDVI, with NDVI showing the greatest responses to LAI at the 5 m resolution. However, NDVI did tend to saturate at LAI greater than 1.5. Stepwise linear regression produced some differences in the NDVI-LAI relationship between the three sites but when analyzed with an adapted version of the Shaver et al. (2007) model, the relationship did not appear to differ greatly between sites.