ABSTRACT

Pasturelands cover extensive areas of non-iced land in the world and are distributed across diverse ecosystems [1]. This landcover type is of interest in terms of feed availability, quality for livestock production, and regional ecosystem functioning. Biophysical and biochemical properties of pastures are highly variable and are altered by environmental conditions such as climate, soils, and human management. It is critical to understand changes in pastures under human-environment interactions in order to provide relevant information to management practices as well as estimate the impacts on regional ecosystem functioning. Remote sensing has played an important role in monitoring pasture dynamics and providing estimates of pasture properties using multispectral sensors. From the pasture management perspective, one of the ultimate goals for the use of remote sensing would be the quantiœcation of biophysical and biochemical properties of pasture based solely on remotely sensed data, data that are available at a low cost and do not require time-consuming and costly œeld

9.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................207 9.2 Field and Imaging Spectrometers for Pasture Characterization ...........................................208 9.3 Controlling Factors for Biophysical and Biochemical Characterstics of Pasture .................209