Since 1980s of the last century, outbreak of Oriental Migratory Locust (Locusta migratoria manilensis Meyen) has rampantly emerged again in some regions of China. It is extremely important to monitor efficiently the locust damage to vegetation in order to control this kind of insect pest. In this paper, taking Huanghua County of Hebei province, China as the study area and based on the in situ hyper-spectral data, the differences in canopy reflectance spectra and the characteristic parameters of hyper-spectra were analyzed and compared for the reeds at normal growing and for those under encroaching from locusts. In addition, five models were developed to simulate the relations between the characteristic parameters of hyper-spectra and Leaf Area Index (LAI) of reeds. The result showed that among those indices the locust damage spectra index (LDSI) is mostly applicable to reflect the intensity of locust damage in the study area. Finally, a scheme for the intensity distinction of locust damage to reeds was suggested based on LDSI data, i.e., no damage if LDSI is over 62.856, slightly damage if LDSI is between 41.254 and 59.496, and seriously damage if LDSI is less than 41.254.

Date Published: 9 October 2007
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 6679, Remote Sensing and Modeling of Ecosystems for Sustainability IV, 66790B (9 October 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.732248

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6679:
Remote Sensing and Modeling of Ecosystems for Sustainability IV
Wei Gao; Susan L. Ustin, Editor(s)