Flux towers in the sky: global ecology from space.

摘要: Global ecology - the study of interactions among Earth's ecosystems, land, atmosphere and oceans depends crucially on global observations: this paper focuses space-based observations terrestrial ecosystems. Early relied an extrapolation detailed site-level observations, using models increasing complexity. Modern has been enabled largely by vegetation indices (greenness) from operational imagery but current capabilities greatly expand scientific possibilities. New spacecraft in orbit allowed estimation gross carbon fluxes, photosynthesis, biomass burning, evapotranspiration biomass, to create virtual eddy covariance sites sky. Planned missions will reveal dimensions diversity life itself. These improve our understanding productivity storage, land use, cycle-climate feedback, diversity-productivity relationships enable improved climate forecasts. Advances remote sensing challenge ecologists relate information organised biome species new data arrayed pixels develop theory address previously unobserved scales.