A new hyperspectral index of biological crust in remote sensing

Biological crusts (BC) are an organic complex, composed of bacteria, cyanobacteria, diatoms, green algae, tiny fungi, ground jackets, and moss plants, as well as other related organisms. BC is distributed about 40% in arid areas, which is one of the important surface landscapes in the intertwined area between oasis and desert. The relationship between BC and drought is close, which can be used to monitor desertification and water resources in remote sensing. However, the current monitoring of BC uses a simple BC index composed of multi-spectrum to extract its area distribution in remote sensing, which makes it difficult to accurately detect its area. This study considers the characteristic bands in the hyper-spectrum cure and designs a hyperspectral index of BS, i.e., HBCI. The HBCI is used, and we successfully estimated the area of biological soil crusts (Kappa=0.86) in the PRISMA image. This finding has help for the regional climate change research.