The importance of spatial, spectral and temporal constraints for a hyperspectral modeling of vegetational continuum and habitat assessment parameter

Imaging spectroscopy holds specific applications in mapping natural vegetation structures for nature conservation and ecological quantities for a better process understanding. However, common methods of vegetation classification often fail to cover variability of ecological surface parameter, especially in transition zones. In this paper we analyze the potential of two hyperspectral sensors (HyMap, AISA) to bridge ecological models with spectral information in order to map vegetational continuum, habitat types as well as assessment categories for legal authorities. As a first step a new method of aggregating ordination space structure via Kriging estimators were introduced to parameterize vegetation characteristics. With regard to future sensor design a higher spectral resolution could be detected as preferable in predicting ordination axes metrics with PLS-models. Furthermore an increasing spatial resolution was identified as a key factor observing small scale heterogeneity for habitat encroachment whereas habitat distinction can be adequately realized on the basis of occurrence probabilities.