Ecoinformatics and Soil-Plant Formations - New Ecoinformatics Tools in Environmental Science: Applications and Decision-making - page 650

degree of correspondence between published classi cations and real distributions of

vegetation types in final model estimations of EMW attenuation by the

vegetation cover. Therefore, GIMS technology stipulates that the spatial structure of
the vegetation of the landscape studied is corrected by satellite observations.
However, reliable observations are available only for relatively limited areas.
Therefore, extrapolations are often used to correct the vegetation structure image.
The effective global spatial structure of SPFs depends on the speci

fl uences the

c features of
problem solved. For instance, Bounoua et al. (2000) using SiB2 model and spatial
resolution 7.2

for 12 types of SPFs analyzed seasonal variations of NDVI
depending on the climate change. Sud et al. (1996) used horizontal resolution 4

°× 9.0 °

°
for 13 types of soil-plant formations to study biogeophysical consequences of a
tropical deforestation scenario realization. Certainly, the quality of results is a
function of both soil-plant classi

°× 5

cation and spatial resolution. Unfortunately, at the
present time there is no reliable global database with detailed parametrical
description of SPFs and this is one of the most important problems of global
monitoring.
Biometric and production characteristics of the vegetation covers are important
for the solution to many problems when it is necessary to assess the consequences
of anthropogenic activity, to decide the economic problems of the nature man-
agement, to assess the risk of the land ecosystem reconstruction, and to study the
causes of natural disasters. Moreover, there are numerous other problems arising in
the NSS with the use of SPFs archives. The base of SPFs archive of long-time
storing contains the existing spatial and structural classi cations of SPFs. Examples

of such classi cations are given in Figs. 1.9 and 1.11 . The GIMS database and

knowledge base is filled with information about the SPFs spatial structure and their

characteristics. Consequently, the archive of biometric and production character-
istics of vegetation (ABPCV) consists from three basic levels:

1. Scales of spatial geographical discretization of the land surface.
2. Skeleton map containing the vegetation types in each pixel of spatial discreti-
zation of the land surface.
3. Biometric and production characteristics of vegetation located in each pixel of
the land surface.

file structure
(Figs. 8.5 and 8.6 ). Files with the intermediate information include data about
illumination, nutrient salts in soil, soil moisture, topographic parameters, etc.
Information control system of the ABPCV is presented in Fig. 8.7 .
Figure 8.8 explains the ABPCV con

Information content of these levels is supported by the ABPCV

file of metadata has doc-
umentation giving a possibility to make a correct choice of data that are needed for
the user.

guration where