A Landsat Thematic Mapper investigation of the geobotanical relationships in the northern spruce-fir forest, Mt. Moosilauke, New Hampshire

This investigation, in the northern spruce-fir forest at Mt. Moosilauke, NH, indicates that Landsat TM data can be used to distinguish between and map major vegetation zones. Principal components analysis can be used to reduce the dimensionality of the TM data; and in this simpler spectral space, it is easier to visualize the discrimination between major vegetation zones: the northern hardwoods zone, spruce-fir zone, fir zone, and alpine tundra zone. The moisture stress index highlights areas of heavy forest damage (fir waves), but does not correlate with low levels of damage in the mixed, background forest at Mt. Moosilauke. Care must be taken to avoid confusion between high-elevation climatically-stressed vegetation (normal krummholz forest) and damaged lower elevation forests, both of which have similar TM5/TM4 ratio values.