Mapping gains and losses in woody vegetation across global tropical drylands

Woody vegetation in global tropical drylands is of significant importance for both the interannual variability of the carbon cycle and local livelihoods. Satellite observations over the past decades provide a unique way to assess the vegetation long‐term dynamics across biomes worldwide. Yet, the ac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global change biology 2017-04, Vol.23 (4), p.1748-1760
Main Authors: Tian, Feng, Brandt, Martin, Liu, Yi Y., Rasmussen, Kjeld, Fensholt, Rasmus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon Cycle
Climate change
deforestation
drylands
Ecosystem
Environmental Monitoring
Forests
nonphotosynthetic woody component
Plants
remote sensing
Reproducibility of Results
Satellite Imagery
Seasons
shrub encroachment
Terrestrial ecosystems
trend analysis
Vegetation
wood biomass
woody vegetation
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Summary:Woody vegetation in global tropical drylands is of significant importance for both the interannual variability of the carbon cycle and local livelihoods. Satellite observations over the past decades provide a unique way to assess the vegetation long‐term dynamics across biomes worldwide. Yet, the actual changes in the woody vegetation are always hidden by interannual fluctuations of the leaf density, because the most widely used remote sensing data are primarily related to the photosynthetically active vegetation components. Here, we quantify the temporal trends of the nonphotosynthetic woody components (i.e., stems and branches) in global tropical drylands during 2000–2012 using the vegetation optical depth (VOD), retrieved from passive microwave observations. This is achieved by a novel method focusing on the dry season period to minimize the influence of herbaceous vegetation and using MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data to remove the interannual fluctuations of the woody leaf component. We revealed significant trends (P 
ISSN:1354-1013
1365-2486
DOI:10.1111/gcb.13464