Correlation of Net Ecosystem Carbon Exchange observations and remotely sensed spectral signals at Maize Fields in Nebraska

Agricultural land management practices often involve involve different land management techniques including irrigation, conservation tilling, and conventional tilling. These differing agricultural land management techniques can cause differing microclimates and ultimately have an impact on the net ecosystem exchange (NEE) over differing agricultural fields. While differences in NEE are well measured at eddy covariance towers, differing land management techniques are not well represented in modeled NEE. Previous studies have observed strong correlations between vegetation indices such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and carbon cycling. Using the three AmeriFlux stations located in Nebraska, which are located on maize agricultural fields with differing land management techniques, the NEE will be compared and correlated with spectral signals and vegetation indices that are computed using downscaled MODIS reflectance. The MODIS reflectance observations are downscaled using the STARFM model developed by Gao et al. (2006), which downscales MODIS observations (500m spatial scale) to a spatial scale identical to LANDSAT (30m spatial resolution). The signals and vegetation indices that account for the a significant amount of variation NEE estimated from ground observations will be used to develop a model that will estimate NEE using remotely sensed observations in agricultural regions.