Assessing land surface phenology in Araucaria-Nothofagus forests in Chile with Landsat 8/Sentinel-2 time series

The Araucaria-Nothofagus forests are a unique ecosystem in temperate rainforests of Chile and Argentina. They include red-listed species and have a high cultural importance for the ancestral population and thus require continuous monitoring to support conservation. Monitoring of phenology by satellite observations is a key tool to quantify the impact of climate variability on terrestrial vegetation. Here we aim to provide a first quantification and ecological understanding of the land surface phenology of protected Araucaria-Nothofagus forests in the Conguillío National Park in southern Chile. We exploit time series of enhanced vegetation index from Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery from 2016 to 2020 to derive start and end-of-season (SOS and EOS) information at 10 × 10 m spatial resolution. Results show that, on average, SOS varies between 11th October and 5th November (quantiles 25% and 75% of all pixels). SOS occurs later at higher elevation, in sparsely vegetated stands, o...