Leakiness: A new index for monitoring the health of arid and semiarid landscapes using remotely sensed vegetation cover and elevation data

The health of arid and semiarid lands needs to be monitored, particularly if they are used to produce food and fiber, and are prone to loss of vegetation cover and soil. Indicators of landscape health based on remotely sensed data could cost-effectively integrate structural and functional attributes of land surfaces across a range of scales. In this paper, we describe a new index for remotely monitoring changes in the health of land. The new index takes important aspects of landscape structure and function into account by focusing on the potential for landscapes to lose or ‘leak’ (not retain) soil sediments. We combined remotely sensed vegetation patchiness data with digital elevation model (DEM) data to derive a quantitative metric, the landscape leakiness index, LI. This index is strongly linked to landscape function by algorithms that reflect the way in which spatial configuration of vegetation cover and terrain affect soil loss. Linking LI to landscape function is an improvement on existing indicators that are based on qualitatively assessing remotely sensed changes in vegetation cover. Using archived Landsat imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission DEMs, we found for example that LI indicated improvements in the condition or health of a rangeland paddock that was monitored from 1980 to 2002. This paddock is located in central Australia and its improved health is documented by photographs and field data. Although the full applicability of LI remains to be explored, we have demonstrated that it has the potential to serve as a useful ecological indicator for monitoring the health of arid and semiarid landscapes.