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| Titel |
Understanding the structure of Exmoor's peatland ecosystems using laser-scanning technologies |
| VerfasserIn |
D. J. Luscombe, K. Anderson, A. Wetherelt, E. Grand-Clement, N. Le-Feuvre, D. Smith, R. E. Brazier |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2012
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 14 (2012) |
| Datensatznummer |
250067899
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Upland blanket peatlands in the UK are of high conservation value and in an intact state,
provide important landscape services, such as carbon sequestration and flood attenuation. The
drainage of many such wetlands for agricultural reclamation has resulted in changes
to upland blanket mire topography, ecology, hydrological processes and carbon
fluxes.
There is a need for spatially explicit monitoring approaches at peatland sites in the UK as
although there has been a national effort to restore drained peat uplands, baseline
and post restoration monitoring of changes to ecosystem structure and function
is largely absent. Climate change policy and the emerging carbon markets also
necessitate the need for enhanced system understanding to inform carbon targets and
understand the impacts of restoration. Exmoor is the focus of this research because many
areas of upland peat have, in the past, been extensively drained through government
“moorland reclamation” programs. A large restoration project funded by South
West Water is currently underway in association with Exmoor National Park, The
Environment Agency and Natural England. Exmoor also provides an analogue for other
westerly peatlands in the British Isles in terms of its climate, ecology and drainage
characteristics.
Our approach employed airborne LiDAR data gathered by the Environment Agency
Geomatics Group coupled with Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) surveys. LiDAR data were
processed to produce digital surface models (DSM) of the peatland surface at a 0.5m
resolution. These data were further interrogated to separate vegetation structures and
geomorphic features such as man-made drainage channels which have damaged the
peatland. Over small extents the LiDAR derived DSM surface was then compared to a
TLS derived DSM to examine the ability of these models to describe fine scale
vegetation and geomorphic structure, which could then be extrapolated to larger spatial
extents.
Exploration of the data has shown that ecosystem structure can be described at a fine
resolution (>10 million measurements, resolution |
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