Thermal Remote Sensing and the Thermodynamics of Ecosystems Development

Thermal remote sensing can provide environmental measuring tools with capabilities for measuring ecosystem development and integrity. Recent advances in applying principles of nonequilibrium thermodynamics to ecology provide fundamental insights into energy partitioning in ecosystems. Ecosystems are nonequilibrium systems, open to material and energy flows, which grow and develop structures and processes to increase energy degradation. More developed terrestrial ecosystems will be more effective at dissipating the solar gradient (degrading its energy content). This can be measured by the effective surface temperature of the ecosystem on a landscape scale. A series of airborne thermal infrared multispectral scanner data were collected from several forested ecosystems ranging from a western US douglas-fir forest to a tropical rain forest in Costa Rica. Also measured were agriculture systems. These data were used to develop measures of ecosystem development and integrity based on surface temperature.