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Monitoring with vegetation indices how vegetation recovers on landslides in Dominican tropical forest

Loo, Kasper van 't (2020) Monitoring with vegetation indices how vegetation recovers on landslides in Dominican tropical forest.

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Abstract:Landslides can have high impacts on ecosystem services and people’s livelihoods. An increased understanding of vegetation recovery on landslides contributes to the improvement of restoration projects and hazard risk reduction. This study aimed to evaluate with vegetation indices how fast vegetation on hurricane-triggered landslides in Dominican tropical rainforest recovers, and which landscape variables influence it. A landslide inventory that geometrically corresponded with landslide positions on Sentinel-2 imagery has been selected based on the finding that landslides dropped significantly (p < .05) more in vegetation index values than non-slided, but hurricane damaged forest. The utility of vegetation indices (ARVI, EVI, FRI2, MSAVI2, NDMI, NDVI and SAVI) has been evaluated by comparing the state of the vegetation on landslides with the surrounding non-slided forest and by analysing the Vegetation Recovery Rate (VRR) of landslides up to 2.5 years after disturbance. EVI was considered the most useful to monitor vegetation recovery in hurricane-prone regions, it had a large drop in values and could differentiate the most between landslides and surrounding forest. A significant multiple linear regression model (F(5,1136) = 42, p < .000, R2 = 0.156) was found that predicts vegetation recovery time based on remaining vegetation, altitude, slope, aspect, landslide zone (initiation, transport, deposit) and soil type. Vegetation indices can be used to monitor how fast young secondary vegetation recovers on landslides. Therefore, it is recommended to make use of vegetation indices to automatically and continuously monitor vegetation recovery to detect landslides in need for restoration projects, this reveals people and properties that are at risk.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:ITC: Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation
Programme:Spatial Engineering MSc (60962)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/85109
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