Topographic effects on estimating net primary productivity of green coniferous forest in complex terrain using Landsat data: a case study of Yoshino Mountain, Japan.

In mountainous areas, irregular terrain significantly affects spatial variations of climatic variables and the reflectance of pixels in remote sensing imagery. Consequently, the variations may affect the estimation of net primary productivity (NPP). The light-use efficiency (LUE) model is used to analyse topographic influence on NPP by evaluating topographic effects on primary input data to the model, including both Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and climatic data. A typical green coniferous forest in Yoshino Mountain, Japan, was employed as the study area. The results show that the average NPP is significantly increased after removing topographic influences on NDVI; the average NPP has a relatively minimal change when only topographic effects on climatic data are considered. When both topographic effects on NDVI and climatic data are considered, the average NPP is 1.80 kg m-2 yr-1, which is very similar to the ground measurement result of 1.74 kg m-2 yr-1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]