Satellite monitoring of disturbances in Arctic ecosystems

This study explores the capability of satellite remote sensing to detect relatively rapid changes of vegetation cover in northern Fennoscandian regions in response to disturbance more generally, and insect defoliation damage in particular. The data used is a long term time series of leaf area index (LAI) at 8 Km resolution derived from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) between 1982 and 2006, developed to be structurally consistent with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) record. The study explores the potential of frequentist traditional statistics to detect disturbances at this coarse spatial resolution over the 25 years time series, and outlines the possibilities that Bayesian methods offer to improve the detection by including prior information on the profile of such disturbance events.