Pedro J. Leitão

University of Leipzig · Remote Sensing Centre for Earth System Research

1. Spatial patterns of community composition turnover (beta diversity) may be mapped through generalised dissimilarity modelling (GDM). While remote sensing data are adequate to describe these patterns, the often high-dimensional nature of these data poses some analytical challenges, potentially resulting in loss of generality. This may hinder the...

1. Biodiversity includes multiscalar and multitemporal structures and processes, with different levels of functional organization, from genetic to ecosystemic levels. One of the mostly used methods to infer biodiversity is based on taxonomic approaches and community ecology theories. However, gathering extensive data in the field is difficult due t...

Societal, economic and scientific interests in knowing where biodiversity is, how it is faring and what can be done to efficiently mitigate further biodiversity loss and the associated loss of ecosystem services are at an all-time high. So far, however, biodiversity monitoring has primarily focused on structural and compositional features of ecosys...

In times of global environmental change, the sustainability of human–environment systems is only possible through a better understanding of ecosystem processes. An assessment of anthropogenic environmental impacts depends upon monitoring natural ecosystems. These systems are intrinsically complex and dynamic, and are characterized by ecological gra...

Biodiversity monitoring is an almost inconceivable challenge at the scale of the entire Earth. The current (and soon to be flown) generation of spaceborne and airborne optical sensors (i.e., imaging spectrometers) can collect detailed information at unprecedented spatial, temporal, and spectral resolutions. These new data streams are preceded by a...

The global increase in demand for wood products, calls for a more sustainable management of forests to optimize both the production of wood and the conservation of forest biodiversity. In this paper, we evaluate the status and future trends of forest birds in Central European forests, assuming different forest management scenarios that to a varying...

Context For many organisms, responses to climate change (CC) will be affected by land-use and land-cover changes (LULCC). However, the extent to which LULCC is concurrently considered in climate change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs) is unclear. Objectives We identify trends in inclusion of LULCC and CC in vulnerability assessments of species an...

en On the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius, Coralita (Antigonon leptopus) is an aggressive invasive vine posing major biodiversity conservation concerns. The generation of distribution maps can address these conservation concerns by helping to elucidate the drivers of invasion. We test the use of support vector machines to map the distribution of...

Species distribution models (SDMs) constitute the most common class of models across ecology, evolution and conservation. The advent of ready‐to‐use software packages and increasing availability of digital geoinformation have considerably assisted the application of SDMs in the past decade, greatly enabling their broader use for informing conservat...

Mapping agriculture with high accuracy is important to generate reliable information about crop production. Pixel-based methods still present problems with noise and usually require post-processing approaches to reach satisfactory results. Object-based Image Analysis (OBIA) enable the detection of homogeneous objects in remote sensing images based...

Species distribution models (SDMs) constitute the most common class of models across ecology, evolution and conservation. The advent of ready-to-use software packages and increasing availability of digital geoinformation have considerably assisted the application of SDMs in the past decade, greatly enabling their broader use for informing conservat...

Demand for agricultural exports in Brazil has stimulated the expansion of crop production and cattle raising, which has caused environmental impacts. In response, Brazil developed public policies such as the new Forest Code (FC) and supply chain arrangements such as the Soy and the Cattle Moratoriums. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of these...

Demand for agricultural exports in Brazil has stimulated the expansion of crop production and cattle raising, which has caused environmental impacts. In response, Brazil developed public policies such as the new Forest Code (FC) and supply chain arrangements such the Soy and the Cattle Moratoriums. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of these pol...

Tropical dry forests and savannas harbour unique biodiversity and provide critical ES, yet they are under severe pressure globally. We need to improve our understanding of how and when this pressure provokes tipping points in biodiversity and the associated social-ecological systems. We propose an approach to investigate how drivers leading to natu...

The paradox between environmental conservation and economic development is a challenge for Brazil, where there is a complex and dynamic agricultural scenario. This reinforces the need for effective methods for the detailed mapping of agriculture. In this work, we employed land surface phenological metrics derived from dense satellite image time ser...

The increasing number of wind farms for energy production raises concerns about their effects on wildlife and particularly on birds. To date it is unclear whether models that combine data on wind turbine densities and habitat suitability can explain the actual spatial occurrence of collision fatalities and how well these models perform in compariso...

Effective conservation capable of mitigating global biodiversity declines require thorough knowledge on species distributions and their drivers. A species ecological niche determines its geographic distribution, and species distribution models (SDMs) can be used to predict them. For various reasons, e.g., the lack of spatial data on relevant enviro...

The Landsat archive presents a unique source for mapping and monitoring of shrublands. Still, efficient and accurate mapping approaches are needed that provide shrub cover fraction estimates over space and time. The spectral signal of shrubs is composed of green vegetation and non-photosynthetic vegetation as well as varying fractions of soil, gras...

In order to understand the significance of hyperspectral remote sensing (HRS) techniques and thus the spectral traits (ST) and spectral trait variations (STV) approach for recording, monitoring, and assessing the status, stress, disturbances, or resource limitations of vegetation, it is first necessary to define both vegetation diversity and vegeta...

Effective conservation measures require the knowledge on the spatial patterns of species communities and their turnover. This knowledge is, however, many times lacking, particularly so for complex systems. On the other hand, recent developments have resulted in tools that enable the mapping of these patterns from remote sensing data, such as Sparse...

In times of rapid global change, ecosystem monitoring is of utmost importance. Combined field and remote sensing data enable large‐scale ecosystem assessments, while maintaining local relevance and accuracy. In heterogeneous landscapes, however, the integration of field‐collected data with remote sensing image pixels is not a trivial matter. Indeed...

Human activities exert stress on and create disturbances to ecosystems, decreasing their diversity, resilience and ultimately the health of ecosystems and their vegetation. In environments with rapid changes in vegetation health (VH), progress is needed when it comes to monitoring these changes and underlying causes. There are different approaches...

Background: The quantification and spatially explicit mapping of carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems is important to better understand the global carbon cycle and to monitor and report change processes, especially in the context of international policy mechanisms such as REDD+ or the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)...

Loss, fragmentation and decreasing quality of habitats have been proposed as major threats to biodiversity world-wide, but relatively little is known about biodiversity responses to multiple pressures, particularly at very large spatial scales. We evaluated the relative contributions of four landscape variables (habitat cover, diversity, fragmentat...

Global biodiversity change creates a need for standardized monitoring methods. Modelling and mapping spatial patterns of community composition using high-dimensional remotely sensed data requires adapted methods adequate to such datasets. Sparse generalized dissimilarity modelling is designed to deal with high dimensional datasets, such as time ser...

ContextDistribution and connectivity of suitable habitat for species of conservation concern is critical for effective conservation planning. Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus), an umbrella species for biodiversity conservation, is increasingly threatened because of habitat loss and fragmentation. Objective We assessed the impact of drastic changes in...

Global change has tremendous impacts on savanna systems around the world. Processes related to climate change or agricultural expansion threaten the ecosystem’s state, function and the services it provides. A prominent example is the Brazilian Cerrado that has an extent of around 2 million km² and features high biodiversity with many endemic specie...

Context. Agricultural intensification is a leading cause of landscape homogenization, with negative consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Conserving or promoting heterogeneity requires a detailed understanding of how farm management affects, and is affected by, landscape characteristics. Objectives. We assessed relationships between...

The EnMAP-Box is a toolbox that is developed for the processing and analysis of data acquired by the German spaceborne imaging spectrometer EnMAP (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program). It is developed with two aims in mind in order to guarantee full usage of future EnMAP data, i.e., (1) extending the EnMAP user community and (2) providing ac...

Monitoring natural ecosystems and ecosystem transitions is crucial for a better understanding of land change processes. By providing synoptic views in space and time, remote sensing data have proven to be valuable sources for such purposes. With the forthcoming Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP), frequent and area-wide mapping of na...

Imaging spectroscopy, also known as hyperspectral remote sensing, is based on the characterization of Earth surface materials and processes through spectrally-resolved measurements of the light interacting with matter. The potential of imaging spectroscopy for Earth remote sensing has been demonstrated since the 1980s. However, most of the developm...

Global environmental change is occurring at unprecedented rates. Triggered by climate change impacts, population growth, changes in life style and, thus, increasing demands for food, feed, fiber and fuel, rapid changes in global land use can be observed. A better understanding of change processes on the land surface, e.g. land degradation and aband...

The role of ecological processes governing community structure are dependent on the spatial distances among local communities and the degree of habitat heterogeneity at a given spatial scale. Also, they depend on the dispersal ability of the targeted organisms collected throughout a landscape window. We assessed the relative importance of spatial a...

Monitoring of the Brazilian Cerrado biome is crucial in order to fully understand its ecosystem functions, its response to changes, and to keep track of ongoing change processes in one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. The huge extent, heterogeneity and complex diversity of the Cerrado makes monitoring very challenging, but optical remote sensi...

Imaging spectroscopy, also known as hyperspectral remote sensing, is based on the characterization of Earth surface materials and processes through spectrally-resolved measurements of the light interacting with matter. The potential of imaging spectroscopy for Earth remote sensing has been demonstrated since the 1980s. However, most of the developm...

The transmission of dengue disease is influenced by complex interactions among vector, host and virus. Land use such as water bodies or certain agricultural practices have been identified as likely risk factors for dengue because of the provision of suitable habitats for the vector. Many studies have focused on the land use factors of dengue vector...

Anthropogenic interventions in natural and semi-natural ecosystems often lead to substantial changes in their functioning and may ultimately threaten ecosystem service provision. It is, therefore, necessary to monitor these changes in order to understand their impacts and to support management decisions that help ensuring sustainability. Remote sen...

Drivers of biodiversity loss are increasingly broad in scale, requiring conservation planning to move towards range-wide assessments. This is especially challenging for migratory species, such as reindeer or caribou (Rangifer tarandus), which use only a small portion of their range at a given point in time, and for which some parts of their range,...

In a time of great land transformations, either by e.g. agricultural intensification or land abandonment and degradation, one of the greatest challenges remains the description and quantification of the gradual transitions between different ecosystems and their services. High-quality spaceborne hyperspectral imagery, by continuously describing the...

In this letter we explore probabilities derived from an import vector machines (IVM) classifier as quantitative measures of class proportion. We have developed a parameter selection strategy that improves the description of class proportions. This strategy incorporates the use of spectral mixtures, which represent gradual class transitions, into th...

The number of dengue cases has been increasing on a global level in recent years, and particularly so in Malaysia, yet little is known about the effects of weather for identifying the short-term risk of dengue for the population. The aim of this paper is to estimate the weather effects on dengue disease accounting for non-linear temporal effects in...

The transmission of dengue disease is influenced by complex interaction among vector, host and virus. Environmental characteristics such as water bodies or specific built structures have been identified as likely risk factors of Dengue because of the available habitats for the vector. Many studies have focused on the analysis of vector abundance in...

Human induced land use and land cover change (LULCC) is one of the most important drivers shaping ecosystem processes and services. The Brazilian Amazon rainforest is a hotspot of LULCC, including deforestation, pasture and cropland expansion, land abandonment and re-cultivation. Its implication for the global ecosystems services, such as climate r...