EGU23-6800, updated on 10 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-6800
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

High-resolution map of the upper range limit of trees over the cold and arid region, a case study in the Three-River-Source National Park, Tibetan Plateau

Jinfeng Xu1,2, Xiaoyi Wang2, Guanting Lv2, and Tao Wang2
Jinfeng Xu et al.
  • 1Lanzhou University, College of Ecology, Ecology, China
  • 2Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

The upper range limit of trees is the most conspicuous boundary on the Earth. However, the publicly available forest extent or forest cover datasets systematically underestimated sparse tree cover, which hindered our recognition of tree limit distribution and its drivers over cold and arid regions. Here, we built a three-step upscaling strategy, that integrates in situ measured vegetation types with spaceborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), microwave, and Landsat images in a Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) classification algorithm, to develop a new map of the upper range limit of trees over the Three-River-Source National Park circa 2020 at 30 m resolution. The multi-satellite-based new products consider vertical structure information that could better detect sparse trees and better distinguish between the shrub, grass, and forest. Validation shows our result reveals high consistency with manual interpretations from Google Earth high-resolution images (R2 = 0.97, slope = 0.99, ME = 18 m). Our proposed method provides a fast and effective tree limit mapping solution at the global scale.

How to cite: Xu, J., Wang, X., Lv, G., and Wang, T.: High-resolution map of the upper range limit of trees over the cold and arid region, a case study in the Three-River-Source National Park, Tibetan Plateau, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-6800, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-6800, 2023.