The relations between land surface morphometry and spectral characteristics of ecosystems in the Ukrainian Carpathians

Spatial planning in mountainous areas requires careful consideration of relationships between abiotic conditions and various ecosystem properties. While detailed spatial databases of these and also detailed ecological databases built on field data are still lacking for many regions, satellite data are an indispensable source of spatially distributed detailed ecological information. Digital elevation models and multi-spectral images are especially useful for the acquisition of detailed, up-to-date and cheap spatial data. In this study, principal component analysis and canonical correlation analysis were used to reveal the structure of the relationships between the land surface reflectance values in different wavelength ranges and to investigate relationships between the principal components and the set of topographic characteristics and indexes for the study area in the Ukrainian Carpathians. The most important factor that influences the land and vegetation cover structure was found to be elevation, while other factors included a set of topographic characteristics and indices.