Effect of establishment fertilization on leaf area development of loblolly pine plantation stands in the southeastern United States

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2021-04-30
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Virginia Tech
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Loblolly pine plantations in the southeastern United States are some of the most intensively managed forest plantations in the world. Within intensive management one common practice is fertilizing a stand/site at establishment. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of establishment fertilization on the leaf area development of loblolly pine planation stands across time. Sub-objectives included comparison of fertilized stands with stands that had no intervention and examination of whether identifying fertilized stands and no intervention stands could be applied across the landscape. To account for the size of the study area and different landscape types (elevation and proximity to a coast) the study area was also stratified by hardiness zone. Additionally, the study was stratified by soil type, specifically CRIFF (Cooperative Research in Forest Fertilization) groupings. Leaf area index (LAI) is a meaningful biophysical parameter and an important functional and structural element of a plantation stand. The Landsat satellite missions provides plantation managers and scientists a way to estimate LAI over time. Google Earth Engine (GEE) provides the ability to leverage the Landsat archive to obtain LAI estimates over large areas and through time. Stand boundaries were buffered inwards 30m to minimize mixed pixels and to match the spatial resolution of Landsat. LAI was computed (using: SR * 0.3329155 - 0.00212) to create trajectories of mean Stand LAI over time for analysis.

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