Ecohydrology
We provide high resolution imagery data of vegetation indices and biosphere-atmosphere carbon and water fluxes (Evapotranspiration, Gross Primary Production and Water Use Efficiency).
There parameters can be modelled in various temporal resolutions to verify how vegetation and plant life are thriving when introduced to various components and irrigation techniques.
These models are also used to quantify the environmental impact of anthropogenic actions
When the suns’ projected electromagnetic energy reaches the surface of the Earth, different elements respond in distinct ways. A typical “fingerprint” of green vegetation is to the right, where the various constituents that comprise the plant either absorb or reflect the solar energy depending on its frequency.
Chlorophyll, which is the primary photosynthetic pigment in green plants, absorbs strongly in the blue (450nm) and red (670nm) regions and reflects much of the green (570nm) light (Govender et al. (2007)).
When the plant experience stress that hinders normal growth and subsequent chlorophyll production, there is less absorption in the blue and red regions and the amount of reflectance in the red region increases.
The various values of reflectance in the different wavelengths are used in algorithms in order to provide different environmental parameters that tell us about how well the vegetation in thriving.
These parameters are used again to produce importants parameters that tell us:
- Carbon uptake
- Water Use Efficiency
- Evapotranspiration
