Yanlin Yang

Grassland resources are important land resources. However, grassland degradation has become evident in recent years, which has reduced the function of soil and water conservation and restricted the development of animal husbandry. Timely and accurate monitoring of grassland changes and understanding the degree of degradation are the foundation for the scientific use of grasslands. The grassland degradation index of ground comprehensive evaluation (grassland degradation index, GDI_g) is a digital expression of grassland growth that can accurately indicate the degradation of grasslands. In this research, the accuracy of GDI_g in evaluating grassland degradation is discussed; the typical areas of grassland degradation in Shangri-La City, i.e., the towns of Jiantang and Xiaozhongdian, are selected as the research area. Through a field survey and spectroscopy combined with Huanjing-1 (HJ-1) satellite image data, grassland degradation was monitored in the study area from 2008 to 2017. The results show that: (1) GDI_g based on six indicators, namely, above-ground biomass, cover level, height, biomass of edible herbage, biomass of toxic weeds, and species richness, can effectively indicate grassland degradation, with the accuracy of the degradation grade assessment reaching 98.6%. (2) The correlation between the GDI_g and the grey values of 4 wavebands and 7 types of vegetation indexes derived from the HJ-1 is analysed, and the degraded grassland inversion model was built and revised based on HJ-1 data. The grassland degradation evaluation index of remote sensing (GDI_rs) model indicates that grassland degradation is proportional to the ratio vegetation index (RVI). (3) The grassland area was 405.40 km² in the initial monitoring period, accounting for 17.26% of the study area, while at the end of the monitoring period, the area was 338.87 km², with a loss of 66.53 km². From 2008 to 2017, the area of non-degraded and slightly degraded grassland in the study area presented a downward trend, with decreases of 59.87 km² and 49.93 km², respectively. In contrast, the area of moderately degraded grassland increased by 41.17 km² from 91.58 km² in 2008 to 132.74 km² in 2017, accounting for 39.17% of the grassland. The area of severely degraded grassland was 78.32 km², accounting for 23.11% of the grassland in 2017. (4) The degraded grasslands in the study area mainly transformed into the degradation-enhanced (deterioration) type. As the transformation rate gradually slows down, the current situation of grassland degradation is not hopeful.

Soil organic matter (SOM) is an important index to evaluate soil fertility and soil quality, while playing an important role in the terrestrial carbon cycle. The technology of hyperspectral remote sensing is an important method to estimate SOM content efficiently and accurately. This study researched the best hyperspectral estimation model for SOM content in Shangri-La forest soil. The spectral reflectance of soils with sizes of 2 mm, 1 mm, 0.50 mm, and 0.25 mm were measured indoors. After smoothing and de-noising, the reciprocal reflectance (RR), logarithmic reflectance (LR), first-derivative reflectance (FR), reciprocal first-derivative reflectance (RFR), logarithmic first-derivative reflectance (LFR), and mathematical transformations of the original spectral reflectance (REF) were carried out to analyze the relevance of spectral reflectance and SOM content and extract the characteristic bands. Finally the simple linear regression (SLR), multiple stepwise linear regression (SMLR), and partial least squares regression (PLSR) models for SOM content estimation were established. The results showed that: (1) With the decrease of soil particle size, the spectral reflectance increased. The smaller the soil particle sizes, the more obvious was the increase in spectral reflectance. (2) The sensitive bands of SOM were mainly in the 580–690 nm range (correlation coefficient (R) > 0.6, p-value (p) < 0.01), and the spectral information of SOM could be significantly enhanced by first-order differential transformation. (3) Comparing the three models, PLSR had better estimation ability than SMLR and SLR. The precision of the 0.25 mm soil particle size and the LFR index in the PLSR estimation model of SOM content was the best (coefficient of determination of validation (R_v²) = 0.91, root mean square error of validation (RMSE_v) = 13.41, the ratio of percent deviation (RPD) = 3.33). The results provide a basis for monitoring SOM content rapidly in the forests of Northwest Yunnan, and provide a reference for forest SOM estimation in other areas.