Capturing plant functional traits in coastal dunes using close-range remote sensing

Coastal dunes are dynamic ecosystems characterized by steep environmental gradients that impose significant stress on plant communities. These stressors, such as salinity, drought, and nutrient-poor soils, create a mosaic of plant communities with strong functional trait identity. Several studies have focused on plant functional responses to environmental conditions, but a gap remains in connecting plant functional traits to large-scale ecological processes through remote sensing. We studied a dune plant community (a total of 17 species) and the ecosystem key species Cakile maritima Scop. to explore how remote sensing-derived vegetation indices correlate with plant growth and specific physiological and morphological leaf traits, including specific leaf area, leaf dry matter content, and flavonoid concentration. We introduced a close-range approach using multispectral imaging to capture high-resolution (1.3 mm/px) data on plant functional traits in coastal dune ecosystems overcoming the limitations of broader-scale remote sensing methods which often suffer from lower spatial resolution and interference from non-vegetated areas. By semi-automatically identifying regions of interest for each species and eliminating background noise, we acquired accurate multispectral signatures that represent plant responses and highlight ecological processes of the key species and the broader community. We observed traits to be stronger than plant growth in explaining the variance of multispectral indices, with leaf flavonoids showing the highest contribution to plant spectral signature.

We demonstrated the effectiveness of close-range multispectral imaging in linking plant traits to ecological processes, with significant implications for upscaling plant responses to environmental variable across larger spatial scales. Furthermore, the research outlines practical guidelines for collecting and processing close-range multispectral data, offering a valuable new tool for and accurate field monitoring of ecosystem processes and plant functions.