We selected healthy Pinus massioniana for pine wood nematode inoculation experiments to get the spectral reflectance of healthy and infected Pinus mas- sioniana in different infection stages via a ground spectrometer ( wavelength in 350 - 2 500 nm), and analyzed the changes in chlorophyll content at various periods. The original spectral reflectance of healthy and infected P. massoniana was significantly different in the middle and late infection stages, and the reflection peak and absorption valley in visible light region and near infrared region gradually weakened and even disappeared to a straight line. There was significant correlation rela- tionship between chlorophyll content of infected plants and spectral reflectance at the wavelength of 1 405 nm, and the quantitative inversion model of chlorophyll content was correspondingly established as follows: Car = - 1.74(X1~ )2 + 4. 72X1,~ - 0. 76. Through first-order derivative spectra at the wavelength of 593 nm, combined with quantitative inversion of the corresponding chlorophyll content, we can discriminate whether P. massoniana is infected by pine lt disease or not, especially in the early stages before disease features are visible to the naked eyes it has a good quantitative monitoring effect.
Forest losses or gains have long been recognized as critical processes modulating the carbon flux between the biosphere and the atmosphere. Timely, accurate and spatially explicit information on forest disturbance and recovery history is required for assessing the effectiveness of existing forest management. The major objectives of our research focused on testing the mapping efficacy of the vegetation change tracker (VCT) model over a forested area in China. We used a new version of VCT algorithm built upon the Landsat time series stacks (LTSS). The LTSS consisted of yearly image acquisitions to map forest disturbance history from 1987 to 2011 over the Ning-Zhen Mountains, Jiangsu Province of east China. The LTSS consisted of TM and ETM+ scenes with different projec- tions due to distinct data sources (Beijing remote sensing ground station and the USGS EROS Center). The valida- tion results of the disturbance year maps showed that most spatial agreement measures ranged from 70 to 86 %, comparable with the VCT accuracies reported for many places in USA. Very low accuracies were identified in 1995 (38.3 %) and 1992 (56.2 %) in the current analysis. These resulted from the insensitivity of the VCT algorithm to detect low intensity disturbances and also from the mis- registration errors of the image pairs. Major forest distur- bance types existing in our study area were identified as agricultural expansion (39.8 %), urbanization (24.9 %), forest management practice (19.3 %), and mining (12.8 %). In general, there was a gradual decreasing trend in forest cover throughout this region, caused principally by China's economic, demographic, environmental and political policies and decisions, as well as some weather events. While VCT has largely been used to assess long term changes and trends in the USA, it has great potential for assessing landscape level change elsewhere throughout the world.