What is it about?
By detecting patterns in satellite data and ecosystem flux measurements, we quantify the effect of low soil moisture in reducing vegetation productivity. Large datasets were used in combination with a method based on machine learning (Artificial Neural Networks) to detect these patterns. We find a strong influence of soil moisture.
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Why is it important?
Our results suggest that information on soil moisture has to be accounted for when estimating vegetation productivity from satellite data. Most widely used current satellite-based methods do not and are therefore expected to be biased high under dry conditions.
Perspectives
The research that led to this publication was enabled by large open-access datasets. It provided a fascinating playground to apply powerful machine learning algorithms and reveal something about the functioning of ecosystems that has been completely obscured in a data-poor world.
Benjamin Stocker
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Quantifying soil moisture impacts on light use efficiency across biomes, New Phytologist, March 2018, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/nph.15123.
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