Quantifying drought’s influence on moist soil seed vegetation in California’s Central Valley through remote sensing

California’s Central Valley, USA is a critical component of the Pacific Flyway despite loss of more than 90% of its wetlands. Moist soil seed (MSS) wetland plants are now produced by mimicking seasonal flooding in managed wetlands to provide an essential food resource for waterfowl. Managers need MS...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecological applications 2020-10, Vol.30 (7), p.1-20
Main Authors: Byrd, Kristin B., Lorenz, Austen A., Anderson, James A., Wallace, Cynthia S. A., Moore-O’Leary, Kara A., Isola, Jennifer, Ortega, Ricardo, Reiter, Matthew E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aquatic plants
California
Central Valley
Chlorophyll
Climate change
Conservation
Critical components
Crypsis
Crypsis schoenoides
Decisions
Drought
Droughts
Environmental monitoring
Floating plants
Flooding
Land ownership
Landsat
Landsat satellites
machine learning
managed wetland
Management decisions
Mimicry
moist soil management
Productivity
Regression analysis
Regression models
Remote sensing
Remote Sensing Technology
Resource allocation
Seeds
Soil
Soil moisture
Soils
Support vector machines
Valleys
Variance analysis
Water availability
Water conservation
Water management
Water shortages
Water supply
Waterfowl
waterfowl food resources
Wetland management
Wetlands
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Summary:California’s Central Valley, USA is a critical component of the Pacific Flyway despite loss of more than 90% of its wetlands. Moist soil seed (MSS) wetland plants are now produced by mimicking seasonal flooding in managed wetlands to provide an essential food resource for waterfowl. Managers need MSS plant area and productivity estimates to support waterfowl conservation, yet this remains unknown at the landscape scale. Also the effects of recent drought on MSS plants have not been quantified. We generated Landsat-derived estimates of extents and productivity (seed yield or its proxy, the green chlorophyll index) of major MSS plants including watergrass (Echinochloa crusgalli) and smartweed (Polygonum spp.) (WGSW), and swamp timothy (Crypsis schoenoides) (ST) in all Central Valley managed wetlands from 2007 to 2017. We tested the effects of water year, land ownership and region on plant area and productivity with a multifactor nested analysis of variance. For the San Joaquin Valley, we explored the association between water year and water supply, and we developed metrics to support management decisions. MSS plant area maps were based on a support vector machine classification of Landsat phenology metrics (2017 map overall accuracy: 89%). ST productivity maps were created with a linear regression model of seed yield (n = 68, R² = 0.53, normalized RMSE = 10.5%). The Central Valley-wide estimated area for ST in 2017 was 32,369 ha (29,845–34,893 ha 95% CI), and 13,012 ha (11,628–14,396 ha) for WGSW. Mean ST seed yield ranged from 577 kg/ha in the Delta Basin to 365 kg/ha in the San Joaquin Basin. WGSW area and ST seed yield decreased while ST area increased in critical drought years compared to normal water years (Scheffe’s test, P < 0.05). Greatest ST area increases occurred in the Sacramento Valley (~75%). Voluntary water deliveries increased in normal water years, and ST seed yield increased with water supply. Z scores of ST seed yield can be used to evaluate wetland performance and aid resource allocation decisions. Updated maps will support habitat monitoring, conservation planning and water management in future years, which are likely to face greater uncertainty in water availability with climate change.
ISSN:1051-0761
1939-5582
DOI:10.1002/eap.2153