Introducing a Method for Ecosystem Health Assessment Based on Remote Sensing Technologies

Author

Asst. Prof. Research Inst. Of Iran (ARI)

Abstract

Widespread impacts of human activities have been the most important environmental issues of the
current century that resulted in the loss of major parts of the structures and functions of important
ecosystems around the world. This dilemma, clarifies the need to assess and control these destructive
trends. Assessment and monitoring of ecosystem health, means a continuous assessment of overall
performance, including: monitoring of sustainability and stability of the structure, function and
process of the ecosystem and its resilience after the occurrence of a disturbance or stress. Ecosystem
health has been recently monitored by establishing quantitative indicators, detecting and monitoring
their changes over a long period of time. Current research illustrates how ecological problems ranging
from biodiversity loss to land-use change have benefited greatly from advances in geospatial
technologies such as GIS and remote sensing, both in the provision of data and access to spatial data
analysis tools. This research intend to study and suggest a new method for monitoring and assessing
the environmental health by using spatial indicators based on remote sensing and GIS technologies.
The result of the study indicates that among the indicators of ecosystem health based on remotely
sensed data, land cover maps with suitable temporal resolution and vegetation indices like NDVI and
LAI are the most suitable indicators for ecosystem health estimation. This research also suggests the
integration of landscape and biodiversity matrixes as well as non-remote sensing indicators (like
carrying capacity and environmental loads estimation) are to be proposed indicators in order to
estimate ecosystem health with more accuracy.

Keywords