scholarly journals Vegetation Dynamic Assessment by NDVI and Field Observations for Sustainability of China’s Wulagai River Basin

Author(s):  
Panpan Chen ◽  
Huamin Liu ◽  
Zongming Wang ◽  
Dehua Mao ◽  
Cunzhu Liang ◽  
...  

Accurate monitoring of grassland vegetation dynamics is essential for ecosystem restoration and the implementation of integrated management policies. A lack of information on vegetation changes in the Wulagai River Basin restricts regional development. Therefore, in this study, we integrated remote sensing, meteorological, and field plant community survey data in order to characterize vegetation and ecosystem changes from 1997 to 2018. The residual trend (RESTREND) method was utilized to detect vegetation changes caused by human factors, as well as to evaluate the impact of the management of pastures. Our results reveal that the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of each examined ecosystem type showed an increasing trend, in which anthropogenic impact was the primary driving force of vegetation change. Our field survey confirmed that the meadow steppe ecosystem increased in species diversity and aboveground biomass; however, the typical steppe and riparian wet meadow ecosystems experienced species diversity and biomass degradation, therefore suggesting that an increase in NDVI may not directly reflect ecosystem improvement. Selecting an optimal indicator or indicator system is necessary in order to formulate reasonable grassland management policies for increasing the sustainability of grassland ecosystems.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 4035
Author(s):  
Xiaohui Zhai ◽  
Xiaolei Liang ◽  
Changzhen Yan ◽  
Xuegang Xing ◽  
Haowei Jia ◽  
...  

In recent decades, the vegetation of the Sanjiangyuan region has undergone a series of changes under the influence of climate change, and ecological restoration projects have been implemented. In this paper, we analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of vegetation in this region using the satellite-retrieved normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from the global inventory modeling and mapping studies (GIMMS) and moderate resolution imaging and spectroradiometer (MODIS) datasets during the past 34 years. Specifically, the characteristics of vegetation changes were analyzed according to the stage of implementation of different ecological engineering programs. The results are as follows. (1) The vegetation in 65.6% of the study area exhibited an upward trend, and in 53.0% of the area, it displayed a large increase, which was mainly distributed in the eastern part of the study area. (2) The vegetation NDVI increased to differing degrees during stages of ecological engineering. (3) The NDVI in the western part of the Sanjiangyuan region is mainly affected by temperature, while in the northeastern part, the NDVI is affected more by precipitation. In the southern part, however, vegetation growth is affected neither by temperature nor by precipitation. On the whole region, vegetation growing is more affected by temperature than by precipitation. (4) The impacts of human activities on vegetation change are both positive and negative. In recent years, ecological engineering projects have had a positive impact on vegetation growth. This study can help us to correctly understand the impact of climate change on vegetation growth, so as to provide a scientific basis for the evaluation of regional ecological engineering effectiveness and the formulation of ecological protection policies.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 1103-1114 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Maignan ◽  
F.-M. Bréon ◽  
F. Chevallier ◽  
N. Viovy ◽  
P. Ciais ◽  
...  

Abstract. Atmospheric CO2 drives most of the greenhouse effect increase. One major uncertainty on the future rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is the impact of the anticipated climate change on the vegetation. Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVM) are used to address this question. ORCHIDEE is such a DGVM that has proven useful for climate change studies. However, there is no objective and methodological way to accurately assess each new available version on the global scale. In this paper, we submit a methodological evaluation of ORCHIDEE by correlating satellite-derived Vegetation Index time series against those of the modeled Fraction of absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR). A perfect correlation between the two is not expected, however an improvement of the model should lead to an increase of the overall performance. We detail two case studies in which model improvements are demonstrated, using our methodology. In the first one, a new phenology version in ORCHIDEE is shown to bring a significant impact on the simulated annual cycles, in particular for C3 Grasses and C3 Crops. In the second case study, we compare the simulations when using two different weather fields to drive ORCHIDEE. The ERA-Interim forcing leads to a better description of the FPAR interannual anomalies than the simulation forced by a mixed CRU-NCEP dataset. This work shows that long time series of satellite observations, despite their uncertainties, can identify weaknesses in global vegetation models, a necessary first step to improving them.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liying Geng ◽  
Tao Che ◽  
Xufeng Wang ◽  
Haibo Wang

The Qilian Mountain ecosystems play an irreplaceable role in maintaining ecological security in western China. Vegetation, as an important part of the ecosystem, has undergone considerable changes in recent decades in this area, but few studies have focused on the process of vegetation change. A long normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series dataset based on remote sensing is an effective tool to investigate large-scale vegetation change dynamics. The MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) NDVI dataset has provided very detailed regional to global information on the state of vegetation since 2000. The aim of this study was to explore the spatial-temporal characteristics of abrupt vegetation changes and detect their potential drivers in the Qilian Mountain area using MODIS NDVI data with 1 km resolution from 2000 to 2017. The Breaks for Additive Season and Trend (BFAST) algorithm was adopted to detect vegetation breakpoint change times and magnitudes from satellite observations. Our results indicated that approximately 80.1% of vegetation areas experienced at least one abrupt change from 2000 to 2017, and most of these areas were distributed in the southern and northern parts of the study area, especially the area surrounding Qinghai Lake. The abrupt browning changes were much more widespread than the abrupt greening changes for most years of the study period. Environmental factors and anthropogenic activities mainly drove the abrupt vegetation changes. Long-term overgrazing is likely the main cause of the abrupt browning changes. In addition, our results indicate that national ecological protection policies have achieved positive effects in the study area.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 2475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ju Wang ◽  
Yaowen Xie ◽  
Xiaoyun Wang ◽  
Jingru Dong ◽  
Qiang Bie

A lot of timeseries satellite products have been well documented in exploring changes in ecosystems. However, algorithms allowing for measuring the directions, magnitudes, and timing of vegetation change, evaluating the major driving factors, and eventually predicting the future trends are still insufficient. A novel framework focusing on addressing this problem was proposed in this study according to the temporal trajectory of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) timeseries of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). It divided the inter-annual changes in vegetation into four patterns: linear, exponential, logarithmic, and logistic. All the three non-linear patterns were differentiated automatically by fitting a logistic function with prolonged NDVI timeseries. Finally, features of vegetation changes including where, when and how, were evaluated by the parameters in the logistic function. Our results showed that 87.39% of vegetation covered areas (maximum mean growing season NDVI in the 17 years not less than 0.2) in the Shiyng River basin experienced significant changes during 2001–2017. The linear pattern, exponential pattern, logarithmic pattern, and logistic pattern accounted for 36.53%, 20.16%, 15.42%, and 15.27%, respectively. Increasing trends were dominant in all the patterns. The spatial distribution in both the patterns and the transition years at which vegetation gains/losses began or ended is of high consistency. The main years of transition for the exponential increasing pattern, the logarithmic increasing pattern, and the logarithmic increasing pattern were 2008–2011, 2003–2004, and 2009–2010, respectively. The period of 2006–2008 was the foremost period that NDVIs started to decline in Liangzhou Oasis and Minqin Oasis where almost all the decreasing patterns were concentrated. Potential disturbances of vegetation gradual changes in the basin are refer to as urbanization, expansion or reduction of agricultural oases, as well as measures in ecological projects, such as greenhouses building, afforestation, grazing prohibition, etc.


2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazuo Mabuchi ◽  
Yasuo Sato ◽  
Hideji Kida

Abstract Several numerical simulations were performed, using a global climate model that includes a realistic land surface model, to investigate the impact of Asian tropical vegetation changes on the climate. The control simulation, under conditions of the actual vegetation, and three vegetation-change impact experiments were performed. The results of the impact experiments were compared with those of the control simulation. The horizontal resolution of the model used in these simulations was 1.875°, being finer than that of the models used in previous vegetation-change impact studies. As a result, it was determined that the effects of vegetation changes in the Asian tropical region had spatially different features. The morphological, physiological, and physical changes of the land surface vegetation in the Asian tropical region certainly induce statistically significant climate changes in these and the surrounding areas. That is, from the results of the bare soil and C4 grass experiments, the decrease in the roughness length, and from the results of the green-less experiment, the decrease of the latent heat flux, exert strong influences on the horizontal and convective circulations of the atmosphere. Consequently, the distribution of precipitation will undergo a change. Other energy and water balances at the land surface are also influenced by the vegetation changes, and the induced changes are generally statistically significant. The influences of vegetation changes in the Asian tropical region were more complicated than those in the Amazon. One reason for this was that the Asian tropical region is strongly influenced by the Asian monsoon circulation; another reason is that the land–sea distribution and the distribution of vegetation in the Asian tropical region are not as simple as in a tropical rain forest like the Amazon.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Jean-Pierre Dedieu ◽  
Johann Housset ◽  
Arthur Bayle ◽  
Esther Lévesque ◽  
José Gérin-Lajoie

<p>Arctic greening trends are well documented at various scales (Fraser et al., 2011; Tremblay et al., 2012; Bjorkman et al., 2018). In this context, Remote Sensing offers a unique tool for estimating the high latitude vegetation evolution in the relatively long-term, i.e. the Landsat archive since the 80’s. Spectral indices derived from visible and infra-red wavelengths provide relations that can be used to quantify vegetation dynamics, we will combine the well-used Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the recent Normalized Anthocyanins Reflectance Index (Bayle et al., 2019), using red-edge spectral band (690 to 710 µm) from Sentinel-2, to better quantify vegetation change over 30 years.</p><p>The application area is located in Nunavik, northern Québec (Canada), and concerns the George River catchment (565 km length, 41 700 km²). This large river basin covers vegetation from boreal forest (South) to arctic tundra (North). Local study sites stem from the Kangiqsualujjuaq village (Ungava Bay) to 300 km south, along the main river and its tributaries.</p><p>NDVI: surface reflectance Landsat bands were gathered for three years 1985, 2000 and 2015 (respectively Landsat missions 5, 7 and 8). For each period of interest, the best August cloud-free scenes were chosen and merged to create a cloud free mosaic covering the study area. NDVI bands were calculated and compared after cloud and water masking. NDVI trends were compared between the main vegetation types following the newly released “Ecological mapping of the vegetation of northern Quebec” (MRNFP, 2018). Centroid of polygons within the main vegetation types of the map were used to classify the NDVI results and assess changes per type. Results of NDVI time evolution revealed a clear greening trend at the river basin scale. Although greening was observed across the whole latitudinal gradient, the relative NDVI increase was stronger on the northern half of the study area, mostly covered with tundra and subarctic vegetation. Both shrublands and sparsely vegetated zones dominated by rocks had the greatest relative NDVI increase. This is likely caused by improved growth of established prostrate vegetation over the past 30 years in response to increasing temperatures trend.</p><p>NARI: greening trends in the Eastern Canadian Arctic have been partly attributed to increases in shrub cover (Myers-smith et al., 2011) and specifically to Betula glandulosa (e.g. Tremblay et al., 2012). Such land cover changes alter species competition (Shevtosa et al., 1997) and soil thermal regime (Domine et al., 2015; Paradis et al., 2016). Transformations in biotic and abiotic conditions reduce the fruit productivity of low stature shrubs of the Ericaceae family (Lussier 2017), which in turn is expected to impact animal (Prescott and Richard 2013) and human populations (Lévesque et al., 2013; Boulanger-Lapointe et al., 2019). An innovative method has been developed in the French Alps to detect the late-fall reddening of shrub leaves and map shrublands (Bayle et al., 2019). Quantifying NARI dynamics related to NDVI dynamics could allow to gain a better understanding of species composition change related to current landscape transformation.</p>


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon D. Pelletier ◽  
Mary H. Nichols ◽  
Mark A. Nearing

Abstract. Quantifying how landscapes have responded and will respond to vegetation changes is an essential goal of geomorphology. The Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed offers a unique opportunity to quantify the impact of vegetation changes on landscape evolution over geologic time scales. The Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW) is dominated by grasslands at high elevations and shrublands at low elevations. Paleovegetation data suggest that portions of WGEW higher than approximately 1430 m a.s.l. have been grasslands and/or woodlands throughout the late Quaternary, while elevations lower than 1430 m a.s.l. changed from a grassland/woodland to a shrubland c. 2–4 ka. Elevations below 1430 m a.s.l. have decadal time-scale erosion rates approximately ten times higher, drainage densities approximately three times higher, and hillslope-scale relief approximately three times lower than elevations above 1430 m. We leverage the abundant geomorphic data collected at WGEW over the past several decades to calibrate a mathematical model that predicts the equilibrium drainage density in shrublands and grasslands/woodlands at WGEW. We use this model to test the hypothesis that the difference in drainage density between the shrublands and grassland/woodlands at WGEW is partly the result of a late Holocene vegetation change in the lower elevations of WGEW, using the upper elevations as a control. Model predictions for the increase in drainage density associated with the shift from grasslands/woodlands to shrublands are consistent with measured values. Using modern erosion rates and the magnitude of relief reduction associated with the transition from grasslands/woodlands to shrublands, we estimate the timing of the grassland-to-shrubland transition in the lower elevations of WGEW to be approximately 3 ka, i.e., broadly consistent with paleovegetation studies. Our results provide support for the hypothesis that common vegetation changes in semi-arid environments (e.g. from grassland to shrubland) can change erosion rates by more than an order of magnitude, with important consequences for landscape morphology.


Author(s):  
Yu Chen ◽  
Xuyang Su ◽  
Qian Zhou

The outbreak of COVID-19 has prompted consideration of the importance of urban resilience. Based on a multidimensional perspective, the authors of this paper established a comprehensive evaluation indicator system for evaluating urban resilience in the Yellow River basin (YRB), and various methods such as the entropy value method, Theil index, exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) model, and geographical detector model were used to measure the spatiotemporal characteristics and influencing factors of urban resilience in the YRB from 2011 to 2018. The results are as follows. (1) From 2011 to 2018, the urban resilience index (URI) of the YRB showed a “V”-shaped dynamic evolution in the time series, and the URI increased by 13.4% overall. The resilience of each subsystem showed the following hierarchical structure: economic resilience > social resilience > ecological resilience > infrastructure resilience. (2) The URI of the three major regions—upstream, midstream, and downstream—increased, and the resilience of each subsystem in the region showed obvious regional characteristics. The comprehensive difference in URI values within the basin was found to be shrinking, and intraregional differences have contributed most to the comprehensive difference. (3) There were obvious zonal differences in the URI from 2011 to 2018. Shandong Peninsula and Hohhot–Baotou–Ordos showed a “High–High” agglomeration, while the southern and southwestern regions showed a “Low–Low” agglomeration. (4) Among the humanist and social factors, economic, fiscal, market, urbanization, openness, and innovation were found to be the factors that exert a high impact on the URI, while the impacts of natural factors were found to be low. The impact of the interaction of each factor is greater than that of a single factor.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 2787
Author(s):  
Xin Jin ◽  
Yanxiang Jin ◽  
Xufeng Mao ◽  
Jingya Zhai ◽  
Di Fu

Vegetation change in arid areas may lead to the redistribution of regional water resources, which can intensify the competition between ecosystems and humans for water resources. This study aimed to accurately model the impact of vegetation change on hydrological processes in an arid endorheic river watershed undergoing revegetation, namely, the middle and lower reaches of the Bayin River basin, China. A LU-SWAT-MODFLOW model was developed by integrating dynamic hydrological response units with a coupled SWAT-MODFLOW model, which can reflect actual land cover changes in the basin. The LU-SWAT-MODFLOW model outperformed the original SWAT-MODFLOW model in simulating the impact of human activity as well as the leaf area index, evapotranspiration, and groundwater table depth. After regional revegetation, evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge in different sub-basins increased significantly. In addition, the direction and amount of surface-water–groundwater exchange changed considerably in areas where revegetation involved converting low-coverage grassland and bare land to forestland.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 3780
Author(s):  
Ting Chen ◽  
Jun Xia ◽  
Lei Zou ◽  
Si Hong

The Hanjiang River Basin (HJRB) is an important source area for drinking water in Hubei Province, China, and the vegetation coverage there is important to the ecological system. Due to the spatial heterogeneity and synergistic effect of various factors, it is very difficult to identify the main factors affecting vegetation growth in the HJRB. With the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from 2001 to 2018 in the HJRB, the spatiotemporal patterns of NDVI and the influences of natural factors and human activities on NDVI were investigated and quantified based on the Mann-Kendall (M-K) test, partial correlation analysis, and Geographical Detector. The individual factors and their interactions and the range/type of factor attributes suitable for vegetation growth were also examined. NDVI in the HJRB increased from 2001 to 2018, and the variation rate was 0.0046 year−1. NDVI was increasing in 81.17% of the area (p < 0.05). Elevation and slope can effectively explain the vegetation distribution. The interactions of factors on NDVI were significant, and the interactions of the elevation and precipitation can maximize the impact among all factors. The range of available landforms is thought to be highly conducive to vegetation growth. The rates of the annual precipitation and annual mean temperature changed from 2001 to 2018, which were 3.665 mm/year and 0.017 °C/year, and the regions where NDVI positively correlated with them were over 85%. Contrary to the general trend, NDVI has obviously decreased in urban areas since 2010. The quantitative findings of this study can help us better understand the effects of various factors on vegetation growth and provide appropriate suggestions for vegetation protection and restoration in the HJRB.


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