Spatio-temporal Distribution of Drought in the Belt and Road Area During 1998-2015 Based on TRMM Precipitation Data

Drought is a worldwide natural disaster that has long affected agricultural production as well as social and economic activities. Frequent droughts have been observed in the Belt and Road area, in which much of the agricultural land is concentrated in fragile ecological environment. Based on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Satellite (TRMM) 3B43 precipitation data, we used the Precipitation Abnormity Percentage drought model to study the monthly spatio-temporal distribution of drought in south region of N50° of the Belt and Road area. It was observed that drought during winter was mainly distributed in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, while it was mainly distributed in Central Asia and West Asia during summer. The occurrence of historical droughts indicates an obvious seasonal cycle. The regional variations in drought were analyzed using the Breaks for Additive Season and Trend tool (BFAST) in six sub-regions according to the spatial distribution of six economic corridors in the Belt and Road area. The average drought conditions over the 18 years show a slight decreasing trend in Northeast Asia, West Asia, North Africa, South Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and a slight increasing trend in Central Asia. However, it was a fluctuating pattern of first increasing and then decreasing in Southeast Asia. The results indicate that the total drought area in the Belt and Road region showed a general decreasing trend at a rate of 40,260 km2 per year from 1998 to 2015.     

Monitoring ecosystem dynamics in northwestern Ethiopia using NDVI and climate variables to assess long term trends in dryland vegetation variability

Dryland ecosystems are highly vulnerable to environmental changes. Monitoring is vital in order to evaluate their response to fluctuating rainfall and temperature patterns for long-term ecosystem safeguarding. Monitoring of long term changes of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and climate variables are fundamental for better understanding of change trajectories in dryland ecosystem, and to ascertain their potential interaction with anthropogenic drivers. In this study, we identify determinant factors of dryland changes by using MODIS NDVI, precipitation and temperature data for Breaks for Additive Seasonal and Trend (BFAST) and Mann Kendall test statistic. BFAST predicts iteratively time and number of changes within a time series data to depict the size and direction of changes. Analysis of NDVI, precipitation and temperature time series data showed substantial changes during the study period of 2000–2014. There is a reduction trend in vegetation showed by the decline in NDVI, with significant breakpoints till 2009 and recovery afterwards, without a significant change in annual trends of precipitation (α < 0.05) for the same study period. Furthermore 2 positive climate trends were founded: a) a significant positive trend on long term annual rainfall during the main rainy seasons and; 2) a significant (α < 0.05) annual increment of the long term mean minimum and mean maximum temperature of 0.03 °C/year and 0.04 °C/year, respectively. This assessment showed that climate variables cannot be considered as the main factors in explaining the observed patterns of vegetation dynamics. Seasonal and interannual precipitation changes have a lower weight as driving factors for the reduction in vegetation trends. Hence, the decline in vegetation productivity of the region can be attributed to the increasing pressure of human activities.     

顾及物候特征的喀斯特断陷盆地土地覆盖遥感分类

在喀斯特分布区,基岩、植被、裸地等多种地表覆盖交错分布,地物覆盖高度异质,并且呈现出短周期规律性变化和长期动态趋势变化,单一时相的影像进行土地覆盖分类精度非常有限。针对这一问题,本文提出一种顾及物候特征的多时相遥感影像分类策略,利用具有高时间分辨率的MODIS NDVI时间序列产品作为数据源,选择BFAST(Breaks For Additive Seasonal and Trend)方法进行NDVI时间序列的物候分解,采用动态阈值法对时序分解的物候轨迹进行标记,最后将物候标记特征与原始光谱时序综合特征进行组合,选择支持向量机(SVM)分类器进行土地利用覆盖分类,并且对比了不同特征空间下的分类结果。以云南省壮族苗族自治州丘北县和砚山县为研究区进行分类实验,结果表明,BFAST模型可以有效地分解出NDVI时序中的关键物候特征,相比基于单纯光谱特征的分类,物候驱动的喀斯特断陷盆地区土地覆盖分类精度有明显的提升,在NDVI、光谱和物候组合特征空间下,土地覆盖分类精度最高,总体精度和Kappa系数分别为88.94%和0.8693,尤其在灌木林、有林地、石旮旯地与稀疏植被的区分中,SOS、POS和GSG等物候特征具有较强的可分性,表明物候特征在地物识别中的有效性。