Hyperspectral reflectance as an indicator of marine-terrestrial nutrient exchange in the antarctic terrestrial ecosystem in the Antarctic Peninsula at a latitudinal gradient

Background/Question/Methods As a contribution to the NSF-funded International Polar Year Research and Education Opportunities in Antarctica for Minorities (IPY-ROAM) program, a student/teacher group project examined how nutrients from penguin colonies affected terrestrial ecosystem structure and function. This independent study that contributed to the above project, assessed the surface reflectance properties of different land cover types in the Antarctic Peninsula region. Three reflectance indices that are commonly used to describe ecosystem functional attributes, NDVI (800-680)/(800+680), PRI (531-570)/(531+570) and WBI (900/970) were used as indicators of land cover greenness, stress and water content.

Results/Conclusions NDVI and PRI were found to be strongly correlated to land cover types associated with penguin rookeries. These suggest that the productivity of terrestrial ecosystems in this region could be associated with the density and size of penguin rookeries. PRI showed a correlation of 0.54 with the number of nesting penguin pairs and a correlation of 0.83 with the distance of the study sites from the nearest penguin colonies which indicated that ecosystem stress is also impacted by the nearby penguin colonies. WBI did not display strong correlations with any of environmental parameters measured by other group members.