Landscape history confounds the ability of the NDVI to detect fine-scale variation in grassland communities

1. The NDVI is a remotely-sensed vegetation index that is frequently used in ecological studies. There is, however, a lack of studies that evaluate the ability of the NDVI to detect fine-scale variation in grassland plant community composition and species richness. Ellenberg indicators characterize the environmental preferences of plant species – and community-mean Ellenberg values have been used to explore the environmental drivers of community assembly.
2. We used variation partitioning to test the ability of satellite-based NDVI to explain community-mean Ellenberg nutrient (mN) and moisture (mF) indices, and the richness of habitat-specialist species in dry grasslands of different ages. The grasslands represent a gradient of decreasing soil nutrient status.
3. If community composition is determined by the responses of individual species to the underlying environmental conditions and if, at the same time, community composition determines the optical characteristics of the vegetation...