1. Introduction
Biocrusts are communities formed by photoautotrophic (algae, lichens, cyanobacteria, liverworts, and bryophytes) and heterotrophic (bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes) organisms that live on the soil surface and cover a large part of the non-vegetated surface in drylands worldwide [
1]. These communities influence fundamental ecosystem processes in drylands, including—but not limited to—nutrient cycling, soil respiration, and runon-runoff dynamics [
2], and are critical for maintaining the multiplicity of ecosystem services they provide [
3]. Attributes of biocrust communities, such as their cover, composition, and diversity, largely modulate their impacts on multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously [
4,
5], and thus have been suggested as indicators of ecosystem functioning in drylands [
6,
7].
Multiple lines of evidence suggest that ongoing climate change can dramatically affect biocrust communities, reducing their cover and diversity [
8]. Reference [
9] estimated a global reduction of their cover by 40% globally within the next 65 years, and quick reductions in their cover have already been observed in experiments simulating climate change [
10,
11,
12]. As biocrusts contribute to ecosystem multifunctionality [
2,
11,
13,
14], changes in their composition, cover and diversity could lead to a reduction of the capacity of drylands to provide essential ecosystem services such as atmospheric CO
2 sequestration and the maintenance of soil fertility. For this reason, finding accurate and operational methods to estimate the cover and diversity of biocrust constituents is a key goal for any ecosystem monitoring program in drylands.
Remote sensing has been highlighted several times as an important tool for biodiversity monitoring and conservation [
15,
16,
17,
18]. It is one of the most cost-effective approaches to identify biodiversity hotspots and to predict changes in species composition, potentially providing repeated measurements and making it possible to study temporal changes in biodiversity [
19]. In this context, the spectral variation hypothesis (SVH) proposes that the larger the spectral heterogeneity of an environment is, the higher the number of species found here will be [
20]. This hypothesis has been validated several times using α-diversity metrics with vascular plants [
21,
22,
23,
24,
25]. Even though measures of spectral diversity based on spectral dispersion (i.e., the coefficient of variation (CV) or the standard deviation (SD)) have shown good correlations with the richness, diversity, evenness, and composition of vascular plants [
25,
26,
27], the SVH has never been tested using lichens.
The use of optical remote sensing of biocrusts so far has mainly focused on mapping and monitoring their distribution [
28,
29,
30,
31,
32,
33] and only one study [
34] investigated lichens’ α-diversity at the landscape level through correlation of high-resolution data with field samples. Since biocrusts are spectrally characterized by narrow absorption features in specific spectral regions [
35], hyperspectral data have shown potential when discriminating them from vegetation and other soil features (e.g., [
35,
36,
37]). However, confounding factors such as water content and biocrust tridimensional structure might hinder their spectral characterization. For this reason, several authors [
31,
33,
35,
38,
39,
40] proposed the use of the continuum removal (CR) algorithm [
41] to ensure the comparability of biocrusts’ absorption features. The CR quantifies the absorption features at specific wavelengths, normalizing the reflectance spectra to a common baseline. This is achieved by approximating the continuum between local spectral maxima through straight-line segments: a value of 1 is assigned to the local maxima, and a value between 0 and 1 is obtained in correspondence of the absorption features. This approach might be particularly useful to enhance the discrimination of lichens, which are characterized by subtle spectral differences [
42].
In this framework, the objective of this study was to apply the SVH to capture the α-diversity of lichens to support dryland monitoring by (i) evaluating the potential of hyperspectral high spatial resolution images to identify biocrust-forming lichens (at the genus level); (ii) exploring the relationships between spectral diversity metrics and the α-diversity of lichens within biocrust communities.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Study Area and Sampling
The study area is located in Aranjuez, central Spain (40°01′53.9″N 3°32′50.8″W;
Figure 1). The climate is semi-arid Mediterranean, with mean annual temperature and rainfall of 15 °C and 349 mm, respectively. The plant cover is below 40%, and is dominated by
Macrochloa tenacissima and other small shrubs, such as
Helianthemum squamatum and
Gypsophila struthium. A well-developed biocrust community, a mixture of lichens and mosses, is present between vegetation, covering up to more than 50% of the plant interspaces. In lichen-dominated biocrusts,
Acarospora spp.,
Buellia spp.,
Diploschistes spp.,
Fulgensia spp.,
Psora spp., and
Squamarina spp. are the most abundant genera, while in moss-dominated biocrusts,
Pleurochaete squarrosa,
Tortula revolvens, and
Didymodon acutus are the most abundant mosses. Since this study focused on lichens, we decided to cluster the mosses identified (under the term
Moss). Finally, in patches of soil dominated by cyanobacteria, genera as
Microcoleus spp.,
Tolypothrix spp., and
Nostoc spp. are present [
43]. See [
44] for a species list of the biocrust-forming lichens and mosses in our study area.
Following the sampling protocol described in [
30], we collected 54 biocrust samples using Petri dishes of 8.5 cm of diameter from 18 plots (three samples per plot randomly chosen). These plots were distributed following two altitudinal transects in two separated slopes of the study area with different exposures (north- vs. south-facing). Each transect was divided in three levels depending on the height of the transect respect to its base, placing three plots on each level.
2.2. Hyperspectral Imagery Acquisition
Hyperspectral images of the biocrust samples were acquired with a hyperspectral scanning imaging system [
45] measuring spectral reflectance in 840 bands in the visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) spectral region (i.e., 380–1000 nm), with a spectral resolution of 2–3 nm (calculated at full width at half maximum;
Figure 2). The system consists of a custom high-precision linear stage that embeds a hyperspectral imaging spectrometer (Hyperspec
® VNIR, HeadWall Photonics, USA) and a dedicated halogen stable light source (i.e., 600 or 1000 W, LOT Quantum Design). Powered by an electrical engine, both the spectrometer and the halogen light source are able to move back and forth at a defined speed. The system is a push-broom scanner and it measures lines of 1004 pixels while moving forward by means of the linear stage until an image of the whole studied object is collected. We used a water-filter tube between the lamp and the mirror reflecting the light to the samples to avoid sample overheating.
Two sets of images were collected: one with the dry samples (dry set) and another 10 min after evenly watering the samples with 30 mL of distilled water (wet set). A total of 18 images (six samples on each set;
Figure 3) with a spatial resolution of 0.091 mm were taken. A calibrated white Lambertian Spectralon
® panel (Labsphere, North Sutton, USA) was placed close to the samples to calculate the reflectance as the ratio between the radiance reflected by the biocrust samples and the panel. The instrument’s dark current signal was measured by manually closing the imaging spectrometer aperture prior to capturing each image and subtracted from the measured radiance.
2.3. Images Processing and Classification
Both sets of images were pre-processed and classified to characterize the composition of each sample. First, the parts in the images not belonging to the samples were masked and the reflectance was computed between 420 and 900 nm. To reduce the noise in the measured signal, a Savitzky-Golay smoothing filter [
46] was applied using a 20 band-window width. A minimum noise fraction (MNF) transformation was applied to the smoothed reflectances to synthesize the main information in a reduced number of MNF components as well as to remove the residual noise in the data. The first 15 MNF components of each image transformation were used as input of the classification algorithm.
The training set for the classification was created by selecting pure endmembers of each classes by visual-identification on the images of the samples. The following classes were considered in the classification process: Acarospora (Acarospora spp.), Buellia (Buellia spp.), Diploschistes (Diploschistes spp.), Fulgensia (Fulgensia spp.), Psora (Psora spp.), Squamarina (Squamarina spp.), Moss and Bare Soil. Biocrust classification was performed with a supervised machine learning method, using a total of around 1000 pixels per class identified in each image to train the support vector machine (SVM) algorithm.
The SVM is a supervised classification method based on statistical learning theory [
47,
48]. Using training samples from the classes of interest, it separates them by a decision surface, called hyperplane, that maximizes the margin between them. The closest training samples to the hyperplane are the ones used by the algorithm, called support vectors. SVM is a binary classifier in its simplest form, but can also act as a multiclass classifier by creating a binary classifier for each possible pair of classes. SVM uses a penalty parameter that allows a certain degree of misclassification. Fine tuning is important to avoid overfitting of the model because increasing its value increases the cost of misclassifying points and forces the creation of a more accurate model, which might be not generalizable. We used a radial basis kernel function, which usually performs well in remote sensing applications [
49]. This kernel is controlled by two parameters that determine the final classification accuracy, the penalty parameter (C) and the width of the Gaussian kernel (c). A large C reduces the training dataset error, but may result in model overfitting to the training data, reducing their generalizability. We used the SVM in a pairwise classification way to classify the images and evaluate the best parameters to use for each classification using the LIBVSM library [
31,
50].
2.4. Validation of Classifications
The validation set for each classification was created selecting 300 pixels per class of pure endmembers by visual-identification. We assessed the accuracy of the classifications using the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) technique [
51] and the area under the curve (AUC) [
52,
53] derived from it. A ROC graph is a two-dimensional depiction of a classifier’s performance [
54] and is constructed calculating the sensitivity and specificity of the resulting classification for each possible classification threshold, where
with
a and
d as the true positives and the true negatives for a certain classification, respectively, and
b and
c as the corresponding false positives and false negatives. The ‘sensitivity’ is the probability that a pixel of a particular class is correctly classified, while the ‘specificity’ is the probability that a pixel not belonging to that class is correctly classified. In this way, the best performing classification would be that with the highest possible value of both sensitivity and specificity. We evaluated the probability of detection (calculated as the sensitivity) against the false positive rate (calculated as 1 – specificity). A ROC graph was calculated for each of the classifications produced (i.e., 18 classifications, six samples each), averaging the curves obtained for each class.
From each ROC graph, we calculated its corresponding area under the curve (AUC), that is an overall quantitative performance score of the classification that allows to reduce the ROC performance to a single scalar value independent of a single prediction threshold [
52,
54]. The AUC represents the probability that a randomly chosen positive sample is correctly classified with greater suspicion than a randomly chosen negative one [
53]. This value might range from 0.5 (a random assignment to the class of interest) to 1 (a perfect classification). The AUC values were calculated by joining the points of the ROC through a composite trapezoid rule using the AUC function from the R package DescTools [
55]. To assess classification accuracy, we also evaluated the average accuracy creating a confusion matrix with the average accuracies from the classifications of each set of images (i.e., dry and wet), extracting the overall accuracy and Cohen’s kappa coefficient [
56]. The points used to create these matrices were the same used to create the ROC curves.
2.5. Computation of the Spectral Diversity
Using the classifications previously obtained, we calculated, for each biocrust sample, the average spectral reflectance of each lichen genera from the reflectance images. We then calculated the pigment absorption features by the continuum removal method, normalizing the spectra to a common baseline. Several metrics were then calculated as indicators of spectral diversity for each sample: the coefficient of variation (CV; i.e., ratio of the standard deviation to the mean), calculated between 420–900 nm (CV420-900), between 550–750 nm (CV550–750), and at 680 nm (CV680), and the standard deviation of the continuum removal (SD_CR), calculated between 550–750 nm (SD_CR550–750; i.e., absorption feature related to the presence of chlorophyll) and at 680 nm (SD_CR680; i.e., maximum peak of this absorption feature).
2.6. Biodiversity Metrics
The fractional cover of each lichen class (classified at the genus level) was used to calculate the following α-diversity metrics for each sample: species richness (S), Shannon’s index (H’; [
57]), Simpson’s index (D; [
58]) and Pielou’s index (J’; [
59]). The details of the calculation are reported in
Table 1. These metrics were calculated using the ‘vegan’ R package, version 2.4–5 [
60].
2.7. Statistical Analysis
To evaluate the spectral diversity metrics that better capture the α-diversity of biocrust-forming lichens, we evaluated through linear regression models the relationships between spectral diversity (calculated as the average CV and CR of the three samples from each plot) and α-diversity metrics (species richness, Shannon’s index, Simpson’s index, and Pielou’s index), calculated using the fractional cover of each plot (the average of three samples). Due to the high heterogeneity of four plots, their samples were not averaged, and the values of the single samples were used in the analysis. Species richness was calculated as the total number of genera observed in the three samples from each plot. Due to the small sample size (n = 26) in this analysis, the cross-validated statistics obtained with the leave-one-out cross-validation procedure were also computed to compare performances of different spectral diversity metrics in predicting α-diversity.
4. Discussion
The high accuracies obtained using SVM to classify hyperspectral imagery reinforce their use to differentiate biocrusts [
31]. Differences in the reflectance of biocrust constituents are subtle (
Figure 5), but SVMs are capable of differentiating spectrally similar classes when the inputs are spectral signatures [
61,
62,
63]. Even though the accuracy metrics from both sets of images were similar, the classification improved when biocrusts were wet. This result is explained by the enhanced differences that appear in the reflectance spectra when biocrusts are metabolically activated after irrigation [
35]. Several studies have characterized the optical properties of biocrust communities in the same optical range used in this study [
42]. However, the spatial scale of these studies only allowed characterization of biocrust communities. Conversely, the fine spatial resolution of the imaging system used in this work allowed to characterize for the first time the pure spectral signature of six lichen genera, to compare their characteristics and to capture the spectral diversity among them. In fact, we used a pixel size lower than the size of each object of interest (i.e., thallus of lichens), as suggested by [
64,
65].
Lichens present different structural and biochemical traits, which create wavelength-dependent variations that can be integrated by spectral diversity, as shown in vascular plants by [
66]. Different genera of lichens are characterized by particular biochemical traits that promote spectral variations, so their spectral diversity can be exploited to infer their α-diversity. However, it is important to understand which are the best metrics to represent the relationship between lichen spectral diversity and α-diversity. Since the absorption peak around 680 nm has been widely investigated as a spectral feature of biocrusts and is present in all lichens (e.g., [
35,
40,
67,
68,
69]), we tested if a spectral diversity metric focused on this feature may be suitable for monitoring changes in their composition. We found that using a spectral diversity metric based on this absorption feature (i.e., the SD_CR
680) increases the spectral variability determined by the chlorophyll content of different lichens, while removing the confounding influence of other factors such as the structure of lichens. In fact, some lichen genera are characterized by a strong tridimensional component (e.g.,
Diploschistes spp.,
Squamarina spp.) relative to others, which can determine a higher intra-genera variability compared to the inter-genera variability. The normalization of the reflectance spectra to a common baseline through the CR algorithm minimized these structural effects, allowing to capture the spectral variability of lichens determined by the chlorophyll content. Conversely, the CV is influenced by both variations in the content of pigments and the structure of biocrusts, which may hide inter-genera variability. This might be the reason why the CV did not perform as well as expected in previous studies conducted with vascular plants (e.g., [
23,
24,
25]), where the structural component constitutes were the main source of spectral variability. Conversely, the results obtained in this study highlight the dominant role of the chlorophyll content to determine the differences between lichen genera and the importance of using the absorption feature centered at ~680 nm to capture their spectral diversity. Nevertheless, using absorption features that are found in the shortwave infrared region of the spectra of lichens [
35] might help to improve the results obtained in this study, that investigated only the visible and near infrared spectral domain.
Among the α-diversity metrics tested, the Simpson’s index correlated the most with the spectral diversity of lichens. The better performance of the Simpson’s index compared to the Shannon’s index is in agreement with recent studies conducted in tropical forests [
21] and in a prairie grassland [
24]. The latter found similar and weaker relationships between spectral diversity and evenness (calculated as Pielou’s index) as we did here, although they correlated these metrics with the CV instead of the SD_CR. This might be due to the fact that Shannon’s index assumes that all the species are present and randomly sampled [
70], and the Simpson’s index is more sensitive to dominant or common species, as noted by [
24], making it more suitable when this is the case. The similar relationships obtained in cross-validation show that these results are reliable despite their sample size.
The imagery used in this study captured with high detail the lichen genera present in our samples, allowing to identify positive and significant relationships between the spectral diversity and the α-diversity of lichens. The methodology proposed in this study should be in principle applied to monitor α-diversity of lichens at wider scales, a key task to understand the shifts in the composition that these communities are undergoing in the actual context of global change [
9,
10,
11,
12]. However, the upscaling of this methodology may be not trivial due to the decreased spatial and/or spectral resolution when working on wider scales.
Many ecological processes maintain scale-dependent relations [
24,
71,
72,
73] and a sampling scale bigger than the object studied might cause a loss of information that is provided at finer spatial resolutions [
26]. In order to understand if the relations found in this work hold with decreasing spatial resolution, the spatial sensitivity of the spectral diversity–biodiversity relationship should be investigated. A previous work in a prairie grassland [
24] identified a strong scale dependence of the spectral diversity–biodiversity relationships and suggested that the optimal pixel size for distinguishing α-diversity in prairie plots was similar to the size of an individual herbaceous plant (1 mm to 10 cm). This might hamper the monitoring of the α-diversity of lichen-dominated biocrusts at landscape scale with sensors installed on satellite or airborne platforms, which most likely would have a bigger pixel size than the one used in this work.
Conversely, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which can carry light-weight imaging sensors of different spatial (reaching 2–4 cm/pixel in many cases) and spectral resolutions [
74] may allow replicating studies like ours at landscape level [
75]. Many of these sensors do not have very high spectral resolution, but have at least one band at ~680 nm [
74], which would allow to calculate the SD_CR
680 (the spectral diversity metric that presented the highest predictability of lichens’ α-diversity in our study) to monitor α-diversity of lichens at larger spatial scales. Achieving the results shown in this work at landscape scale might also be hampered by the spectral properties that other components (e.g., vascular plants, mosses, bare soil) have on the spectral reflectance measured from remote sensors, which might hinder the separation of the pure spectral component of lichens and to estimate their α-diversity. This issue could be however solved using spectral mixture analysis [
76], a technique that models a mixed spectrum as a combination of its spectral components weighted by the correspondent subpixel fractional covers [
77] and has already proved to be successful for mapping biocrusts [
31].