Analysis of fluctuations in vegetation dynamic over Africa using satellite data of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence

Abstract

In Africa, vegetation is important for the protection of species habitats, maintaining local livelihoods, and the existence of wildlife. A comprehensive evaluation of vegetation dynamics using solar-induced fluorescence (SIF) is needed to acquire important information to understand the current situation of how ecosystems react to human activities and climate change, as well as for conservation planning. The research’s purpose was to detect vegetation dynamics in Africa from 2000 to 2017 using global, OCO-2-based SIF (GOSIF) and various datasets, as well as to analyze the factors influencing vegetation changes. The main findings revealed that: (1) The patterns for various vegetation in this study showed that forests experienced more vegetation expansions than croplands, grasslands, shrubland, and sparse vegetation, based on the Land Use Cover Change (LUCC) per vegetation type. (2) According to SIF, the decreasing area accounts for 29.4% of the total vegetation region while expanding area accounts for 70.6%. (3) The Hurst exponent summary exhibited that the majority of studied vegetation variations are consistent and accounted for 79.7%. (4) Based on the residual, we discovered that climatic patterns might be responsible for the greening trend of sparse vegetation and grassland. (5) The Boosted Regression Trees (BRT) showed that during the study period, Vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and the temperature had a greater impact on SIF vegetation dynamics than other factors. Our findings can aid in the development of appropriate vegetation management concepts or strategies to help in vegetation restoration in Africa.

Keywords

• GOSIF
• Human activities
• Climate change
• Vegetation dynamics
• Africa