Wiesmair, MartinMartinWiesmairFeilhauer, HannesHannesFeilhauerMagiera, AnjaAnjaMagieraOtte, AnnetteAnnetteOtteWaldhardt, RainerRainerWaldhardt2022-11-182016-12-152022-11-182016http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hebis:26-opus-123928https://jlupub.ub.uni-giessen.de/handle/jlupub/9232http://dx.doi.org/10.22029/jlupub-8620In the Georgian Caucasus, unregulated grazing has damaged grassland vegetation cover and caused erosion. Methods for monitoring and control of affected territories are urgently needed. Focusing on the high-montane and subalpine grasslands of the upper Aragvi Valley, we sampled grassland for soil, rock, and vegetation cover to test the applicability of a site-specific remote-sensing approach to observing grassland degradation. We used random-forest regression to separately estimate vegetation cover from 2 vegetation indices, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Modified Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (MSAVI2), derived from multispectral WorldView-2 data (1.8 m). The good model fit of R2 = 0.79 indicates the great potential of a remote-sensing approach for the observation of grassland cover. We used the modeled relationship to produce a vegetation cover map, which showed large areas of grassland degradation.enNamensnennung 3.0 Internationalgrassland degradationerosionovergrazingNDVIMSAVI2ddc:630