Spectral characterization of plant diversity in a biodiversity‐enriched oil palm plantation

Abstract Assessing plant diversity using remote sensing, including airborne imaging spectroscopy, shows promise for large‐scale biodiversity monitoring in landscape restoration and conservation. Enriching plantations with native trees is a key restoration strategy to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions in agricultural lands. In this study, we tested how well imaging spectroscopy characterizes plant diversity in 37 experimental plots of varying sizes and planted diversity levels in a biodiversity‐enriched oil palm plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia. Six years after establishing the plots, we acquired airborne imaging spectroscopy data comprising 160 spectral bands (400–1000 nm, at ~3.7 nm bandwidth) at 0.3 m spatial resolution. We calculated spectral diversity as the variance among image pixels and partitioned spectral diversity into alpha and beta diversity components. After controlling for differences in sampling area through rarefaction, we found no significant relationship between spectral and plant alpha diversity. Further, the relationships between the local contribution of spectral beta diversity and plant beta diversity revealed no significant trends. Spectral variability within plots was substantially higher than among plots (spectral alpha diversity ~82%–87%, spectral beta diversity ~11%–18%). These discrepancies are likely due to the structural dominance of oil palm crowns, which absorbed most of the light, while most of the plant diversity occurring below the oil palm canopy was not detectable by airborne spectroscopy. Our study highlights that remote sensing of plant diversity in ecosystems with strong vertical stratification and high understory diversity, such as agroforests, would benefit from combining data from passive with data from active sensors, such as LiDAR, to capture structural diversity.