Publications

Using satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data, several previous studies have indicated that vegetation growth significantly increased in most areas of China during the period 1982–99. In this letter, we extended the study period to 2010. We found that at the national scale the growing season (April–October) NDVI significantly increased by 0.0007 yr −1 from 1982 to 2010, but the increasing trend in NDVI over the last decade decreased in comparison to that of the 1982–99 period. The trends in NDVI show significant seasonal and spatial variances. The increasing trend in April and May (AM) NDVI (0.0013 yr −1 ) is larger than those in June, July and August (JJA) (0.0003 yr −1 ) and September and October (SO) (0.0008 yr −1 ). This relatively small increasing trend of JJA NDVI during 1982–2010 compared with that during 1982–99 (0.0012 yr −1 ) (Piao et al 2003 J. Geophys. Res.—Atmos. 108 4401) implies a change in the JJA vegetation growth trend, which significantly turned from increasing (0.0039 yr −1 ) to slightly decreasing ( − 0.0002 yr −1 ) in 1988. Regarding the spatial pattern of changes in NDVI, the growing season NDVI increased (over 0.0020 yr −1 ) from 1982 to 2010 in southern China, while its change was close to zero in northern China, as a result of a significant changing trend reversal that occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s. In northern China, the growing season NDVI significantly increased before the 1990s as a result of warming and enhanced precipitation, but decreased after the 1990s due to drought stress strengthened by warming and reduced precipitation. Our results also show that the responses of vegetation growth to climate change vary across different seasons and ecosystems.

The consistent monitoring of trees both inside and outside of forests is key to mitigating climate change. Current monitoring systems either ignore trees outside forests or are too expensive to be applied consistently across countries on a repeated basis. Here we make use of the PlanetScope nanosatellite constellation, which delivers global very high-resolution daily imagery, to map both forest and non-forest tree cover for continental Africa using images from a single year. Our prototype map of 2019 demonstrates that a precise assessment of all tree-based systems is possible at continental scale, and reveals that 29% of tree cover is found outside areas previously classified as tree cover, such as in croplands and grassland. Such accurate mapping of tree cover at metric resolution down to the level of individual trees and consistent among countries has the potential to redefine land use impacts, move beyond the need for forest definitions, build the basis for natural climate solutions, and provide a new scientific basis for tree related studies.

Comprehensive assessments of Paraguay's forest cover (FC) change from the 1970s to the 2000s using Landsat observations were conducted, including a wall-to-wall mapping of changes across the whole country between the 1990s and 2000s, and an assessment of forest area in the Atlantic Forest ecoregion in the 1970s using a systematic sampling approach. The derived wall-to-wall FC change map was evaluated using available high resolution satellite images and aerial photos. The overall accuracy values were 92% or higher in the areas covered by those high resolution data sets. The results revealed that the Atlantic Forest ecoregion experienced the most forest loss, with the 73.4% forest cover in the 1970s decreasing precipitously down to 40.7% by the 1990s and further down to 24.9% by the 2000s. The rapid loss of Atlantic forests was driven by complex social economic forces, including widespread land disputes arising from long time inequalities and profits from exporting agricultural products. Forest changes in the Humid Chaco and the Chaco ecoregions were relatively moderate. However, extensive forests were converted to non-forest land use near a major population center. The results also revealed that so far the established protected areas were effective in protecting forest within their border. However, most of the forests surrounding the protected areas were lost by the 2000s. Loss of Atlantic forest is a major threat to the rich biodiversity found in this region. The alarming deforestation rates over the last three decades and the low percentage of Atlantic forest left by the 2000s call for immediate actions to halt the trends of forest loss.

No abstract is provided for this article.

The radiative and physiological effects of doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) on climate are investigated using a coupled biosphere–atmosphere model. Five 30-yr climate simulations, designed to assess the radiative and physiological effects of doubled CO2, were compared to a 30-yr control run. When the CO2 concentration was doubled for the vegetation physiological calculations only assuming no changes in vegetation biochemistry, the mean temperature increase over land was rather small (0.3 K) and was associated with a slight decrease in precipitation (−0.3%). In a second case, the vegetation was assumed to have adapted its biochemistry to a doubled CO2 (2 × CO2) atmosphere and this down regulation caused a 35% decrease in stomatal conductance and a 0.7-K increase in land surface temperature. The response of the terrestrial biosphere to radiative forcing alone—that is, a conventional greenhouse warming effect—revealed important interactions between the climate and the vegetation. Although the global mean photosynthesis exhibited no change, a slight stimulation was observed in the tropical regions, whereas in the northern latitudes photosynthesis and canopy conductance decreased as a result of high temperature stress during the growing season. This was associated with a temperature increase of more than 2 K greater in the northern latitudes than in the Tropics (4.0 K vs 1.7 K). These interactions also resulted in an asymmetry in the diurnal temperature cycle, especially in the Tropics where the nighttime temperature increase due to radiative forcing was about twice that of the daytime, an effect not discernible in the daily mean temperatures. The radiative forcing resulted in a mean temperature increase over land of 2.6 K and 7% increase in precipitation with the least effect in the Tropics. As the physiological effects were imposed along with the radiative effects, the overall temperature increase over land was 2.7 K but with a smaller difference (0.7 K) between the northern latitudes and the Tropics. The radiative forcing resulted in an increase in available energy at the earth's surface and, in the absence of physiological effects, the evapotranspiration increased. However, changes in the physiological control of evapotranspiration due to increased CO2 largely compensated for the radiative effects and reduced the evapotranspiration approximately to its control value.

No abstract is provided for this article.

Areas affected by land degradation in Sub-Saharan West Africa between 1982 and 2012 are identified using time-series analysis of vegetation index data derived from satellites. The residual trend (RESTREND) of a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series is defined as the fraction of the difference between the observed NDVI and the NDVI predicted from climate data. It has been widely used to study desertification and other forms of land degradation in drylands. The method works on the assumption that a negative trend of vegetation photosynthetic capacity is an indication of land degradation if it is independent from climate variability. In the past, many scientists depended on rainfall data as the major climatic factor controlling vegetation productivity in drylands when applying the RESTREND method. However, the water that is directly available to vegetation is stored as soil moisture, which is a function of cumulative rainfall, surface runoff, infiltration and evapotranspiration. In this study, the new NDVI third generation (NDVI3g), which was generated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Goddard Space Flight Center Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (NASA-GSFC GIMMS) group, was used as a satellite-derived proxy of vegetation productivity, together with the soil moisture index product from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and rainfall data from the Climate Research Unit (CRU). The results show that the soil moisture/NDVI pixel-wise residual trend indicates land degraded areas more clearly than rainfall/NDVI. The spatial and temporal trends of the RESTREND in the region follow the patterns of drought episodes, reaffirming the difficulties in separating the impacts of drought and land degradation on vegetation photosynthetic capacity. Therefore, future studies of land degradation and desertification in drylands should go beyond using rainfall as a sole predictor of vegetation condition, and include soil moisture index datasets in the analysis.